You were craving eclipse already, though

you didn't know it; and the son you'd lost

and found and lost again was a wound
you'd learnt to scab, but which festered

nonetheless, as shame will do. You were

master of how to blur a scene, water it down,
how to rearrange the pieces and drink away

the evenings, and in the mornings your

neighbours saw the joke, how the sun
was red as your eyes and the hills creased

as your shirt. Your workmates smelt

the poison sweating through your pores
but never said  a word to your face.

And so at the end your son found you,

burned the body you'd long since ruined,
scattered the ashes into the sea, vowing

to start a new story, one with you not in it.