Missing pieces

Your Andrew’s a dab hand at puzzles like this one

he said, mistaking me in his confusion for my father

his brother, whose death that once had shaken him loose

from domesticity, if not quite forgiven, had slipped

over some event horizon and thus never happened

We’re given these puzzles as if we were children

he said, with half the pieces already

missing it’s hardly our fault we seem a little muddled

Of course I remember when this one was taken

he said as if the photograph was from his own album

rather than some anachronistic library collection

Keep our little secret close, from the boy I mean

he said, your Mary would die if she suspected he knows

If my mother were still alive, I might have let it go

(c) 2013 Slush Poet