Sarah's writing journal

For Poetry Thursday...

The man who used to live in our house before us (three years ago, actually not three months) was a solicitor working from home so we still get about three letters for him a day. I used to forward these on religiously, but gave up about a year ago because thought they couldn't really be that important. There are mornings when it still worries me though, so this poem came about ...

Gone Away

Three months after you move in
and the letters keep coming
until you stop forwarding,
let them pile up by the door,
dusty, unread. Only sometimes
do you flick through, imagining
the offers, demands, claims
unclaimed from all those women
waiting patiently in Kettering,
North London, Leicester
and, once, Rome, for the response
that now will never come. Mr Jones
of Forest Road, can you afford
to ignore us. Those cat tongues
licking envelopes never opened,
a puzzle of what might have been.