someone you love

“be careful who you hate, it could be someone you love” - message on a billboard

The small unkindnesses you do
may well be tallied somewhere down
the line that is your life,
and jerk the needle so that it
makes lies of all you knew,
the polygraph report held up
by those who might have loved you once.

We took our father to the woods
and held our vigilante court,
requesting this and that,
hoping the moonlight plays its part.
He feigned an ignorance of sin.
We made our own ways home,
divided by the trees, and knowing that
we’d never meet again,
for all the chill that gripped our bones.