What She Never Saw. Poem by Terry Collett

Jill can see them
in the garden kissing:
her mother and the man
she has brought home
with her just now.

Father has left,
gone off
with the skinny woman,
who Jill saw with him
at the theatre,
whom he said
was a friend
from work.

She stares at them
in the garden
kissing and holding,
she smiling and he
standing smug
and satisfied.

Her mother had
introduced
the man to her;
he had looked at her,
smiled, spoke trifles,
then looked
at her mother
and spoke
of other things,
leaving her alone
as he and her mother
walked off
into the garden.

He'll probably
stayed the night,
probably share
her mother's bed,
as her father used to do.

She turns away
from the window
and sits
on the edge
of her bed.

She feels
out of it all,
feels put aside,
put out of mind.

Her father brought
his friend home
while her mother
was away.

She stayed
the night too,
in her father's room,
in his bed.

She heard
their laughter,
the friend's giggles.

She had crept
to her father's room
that night,
listened at the door.

By sounds she heard
she pictured,
what
she never saw.