The Stranger in the Drawing

The wall flowered through his coat, 

pale blue where his shoulder lay. 

He studied what the mirror kept,

then went to work that day. 

He sold his daylight, year by year,

in rooms he could not bear. 

The children’s laughter filled the house; 

he paid to keep it there. 

They knew their mother’s gentle hands,

her stories through the nights. 

His love was hidden in the walls, 

the warmth, the shoes, the lights.

She counted all the things he missed, 

the faults, the words unsaid, 

but never saw the hollow man 

who came each night to bed.

He kept the winter from their door, 

absorbed the cold and rain. 

They saw the silence in his face, 

but never asked its name.

In photographs his edges blurred, 

his features thinned to air. 

They said he’d missed their growing years. 

He knew. He’d wanted to be there.

And when he left, he took a book 

of pages blank with age, 

and by the sea he tried to draw 

a younger man’s lost face.

The tide came in, then turned away, 

beneath a sky of rain. 

He watched the water take his footprints 

and leave the sand unchanged.

And there he wept, not for love 

that time had slowly claimed, 

but for the stranger in the drawing 

who had once answered to his name.