No Denouement

I used to imagine having this dramatic confrontation where I'd reveal everything in this powerful voice and my kids would have to realise how wrong they were about me.

As this was rather tasteless, I thought about an email, one of those beautifully constructed bits of deathless prose.

I imagined various scenarios and each slammed up against the same 'wall'.

I choose to be as vacuous as they are, to share nothing, to answer in sentence fragments.

I assumed they would hold to a fantasy long after

my death, so moved the entire relationship,

(or lack thereof) to the box marked Trivia.

Over the years various 'tricks' were attempted

to pull my tongue; I recall the last trick was in one

telling me my Grand Daughter wanted to know my 'history'. I had grabbed this with job, and began to write about

my Mother's side of the family, posting a 'chapter' each day.

So taken by my story I wrote on and on, emailing one chapter
had reached chapter 4 and for some reason sent chapter 14 instead. There was no response. There was no notice that I had gone from 3 to 14 for no one was reading my work. It was just a trick. I ceased. Years passed and out of courtesy I sent an ecard. This provoked a long diatribe about the meaninglessness of ecards. I ceased all attempts at communication. Years passed and then I was told that one of them wanted to get in touch with me. So I connected. Because it was a facial call he could gauge that his arrows fell to the side. This is because after so many years one simply no longer has that automatic caring. And he realised whatever hook he had was gone. And he realised he wanted to make a link. Before it was too late.