Not Today

I'm my dad's Stepford wife

as soon as he wants to talk,

shifting through the glib

gears into a banality

of evil he doesn't

understand

where I go or

what I was once I went.

He cornered me once,

on a car ride to Cardiff,

kept going on about the

family curse:

someone had said 

something bad,

or had wronged somebody,

(when?)

someone else ended up

with a cousin with autism.

I said could

that dark cloud have been

er you know the 

Japanese occupation?

I do admit, it was hard

to see him clanking

like that 

like some computer

with valves,

talking in circles for

two hours

round something

I toyed with

and left by his door,

softly bitten

mouse of despair.