Left for a while

That week they were gone.
Mummy and daddy,
now only the shadows in the backs of their heads
drive to the end of the road alone and vanish.
She waved bye bye with gran all the way past the back gate and
saw them in her mind,
shrinking like an anemone
into that great, blind space of the world.
All week the tensed dark of their absence,
the bare hungriness of it
crouched in the back of her mind
like something important she had dropped somewhere.
And, lost without the great
phantom limb of her umbilical cord
she would hover wide-eyed through the rooms
like a goldfish.
At night she pinched her sheets close around like a tent,
but the beasts watched
at her feet,
still as cadavers,
Moving when she moved,
breathing when she breathed
and when she tip-toed down the hall at night, they crept silent as tigers,
shadows leaping giant-like at every lamp to grab and then
Gone.
Vanished like wizards.
When the week ended there was a car ride to a room.
It was white and
clean as a filing cabinet and
mummy in bed with a funny blue dress.
"This is your sister,'' they said and
a baby sat in a car seat by the door
like a tiny white astronaut.
It looked at her
With its absurd moon eyes,
Pink arms grabbing
Like a jelly baby in a lolly shop jar.
She looked away and the shadows in her eyes became deeper.
Because here's mummy-and-daddy-and-we can go home now and the baby can go away to its house too can't it?
Can't it?
But after that, the baby came too.