Penance

You were in a café today,
taller and trying for a beard, eight years
since I looked on from Mum’s passenger seat
as her twelve cylinder roar sent you flying
from the mirror across your parents’ drive.

That more than one of us got out alive
to touch back down again the other side
of puberty comes as no small relief—
a strange thing then that this morning,
all I could manage was to order tea.

Had I said anything,
you might have told me I wasn’t to blame,
but please consider this my way
of asking you to forgive me.

Penance
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