Visitors

It was three when they knocked.

David, my adopted son,

Was out with “the guys” planning a big night;

His twenty-first birthday.

John opened the front door

To two well dressed strangers

Who introduced themselves as David’s

Birth parents.

I had decided at the time of adoption

Not to keep our whereabouts a secret.

But, until that moment, 

We had never heard from them.

They lived eighty miles away

And decided to see how David was doing.

Twenty-one years of non-existence.

Never a call, never a card, and here they were.

Was it an inability to think,

Or an attempt at a guerrilla infiltration,

Necessitated by twenty-one years of accumulated guilt,

That brought these people to my door?

While shaking hands, after a moments hesitation,

A silence began filling the entrance space.

I filled the void with a suggestion they leave a card,

Rather than allow them to sit.

I’ll tell David that his birth parent were here.

Will he be anxious to see them? Perhaps.

Twenty-one years of silence.

You bastards should not have come.