Someone who’s killed makes part of our lives stop.
The last snap of the front door behind them
Is kept inside a chamber in the heart.

Someone who’s killed
Can seem to go on forever, standing still.
We become their background -trivial,
Mundane- with our house keys, jobs and change.

Someone who’s killed
Is a hope receding like a train just missed;
An unopened present -an unanswered doorbell-
Forever in the house.

When we catch trains and buses,
When we go to work
When we come back from holidays,
When we talk to them and pretend that they answer,

They never go. They can be dead for thirty years.
Sometimes it’s as if they just popped out
For some beers or an evening paper;

And new-found photograph of them can be
A breath held underwater.