Accountable

The world past the window frame looks so peaceful, so calm. A gentle gust stirs a few crimson leaves to fly past the paned glass, sending them fluttering down on the wooden porch. Inside, the child stares out at the failing autumn, his lips dry and his eyes lost. Off past the garden, the postman does his rounds, slipping the letters into the letterbox at the paths end. He frowns at it for a second; the post from the day before is in there still. And the day before. And the day before.

And even the day before that.

 

The room itself is less calm. There’s action, there’s noise, but it’s smothered. Like the whole world is submerged. Both his parents are there, as they’ve been for the last couple weeks. He used to listen to them, but he doesn’t anymore. They haven’t stopped arguing for those weeks now, arguing over their divorce.

 

“You can’t keep him” shouted Andrew, the father. “You don’t have a job; you don’t have the funds to raise him! How do you expect him to have a good life like that?”

 

“The only reason I don’t have the funds is because you want to take the car! How do you expect me to get a job without a car?” Beth spoke back, easily matching his volume, as she has been for the past weeks. “And if you’re on about a good life, you don’t even have a house of your own. Where are you gonna keep him over winter?”

 

“Oh, so you think you’re keepin’ the house? We paid for it together, damn near bankrupted me!” The child reached up to his father, to try and get his attention. His arm was deathly frail, the bones seeping through the skin pulled taught around them. The father didn’t notice.

 

“You have a job, you can get a new house. I’m stuck here hunting. Who do you thinks gonna hire a single mother without a house!”

 

“I don’t care; you’re the one who-” The child stopped listening again. He couldn’t bring himself to anymore, and he knew there was little point. He was too weak to keep his head raised, so he let it dip down to rest against his collarbone. His parents were too busy hasting to care for him. In fact, neither of them had looked at him for the past six days. They just kept arguing, eyes locked in their own concerns. His eyelids fell shut; He didn’t move, he didn’t make a sound. Soon, he didn’t breathe.

 

“Oh, and now our sons died!” The mother said, barely glancing over to what was once her son, now an empty husk leaning against the wall. “I suppose you’re going to blame me for that too, eh?”

 

“It’s your job to make the food; it’s your job to feed ‘im. Of course I’m gonna blame you if he starves to death!”

 

“He wouldn’t have starved if you went and bought him some food. I expect you’ll want to keep his corpse, too then?”

 

“Yes, I will bury him in MY back garden, while you can walk straight out that front door!”

 

“Thank you very much, but I will be burying ‘im in MY back garden, while you walk out past MY car!”

 

They continued arguing.

Notes:

Two parents are arguing over divorce, who should get to keep their one child.

Nearby, the child is skin and bone, trying to get their attention before finally starving to death. The parents continue to argue, unfazed, over the corpse.

 

The poem is about how arguments themselves are rarely about the result, but about how that result affects the other person, not themselves. The parents in the poem are just trying to get the better of their partner, ignorant of how the result affects what they really want.