THE VISIT

They came to visit

on the holidays,

the whole kit and caboodle,

lugging babies and bottles

and teddies and toys,

with more noise

and racket than she’d heard

in weeks.

Her ears almost hurt

with the deafening whine

of the little one

who wanted to sit

on her daddy’s knee,

and the cries of the baby

who just wanted to be fed,

right now,

and never mind the tea.

After a while

she got over the shock

of so many voices, and movement

and colour and noise

disrupting her solitary routine

after weeks alone,

and settled into the flow

of a full house.

Sometimes you don’t know

what you miss until it’s gone,

and sometimes you don’t know

what you’re missing

til it’s back again.

After the initial readjustment

had shifted in her head,

she revelled in the

mayhem of the day.

She forgot about breakage

to the good china, and which child

was terrorising the cat,

and focused on the joy and wonder

of the little faces

as they told her all about

Santa, and what he’d brought.

She decided to just treasure this,

this day of happy noise and to store it

in an imagined box

inside her head,

for the long days coming

when they had all gone,

and the clocked ticked

for her alone.

copyright Roisin Duffy