Family Life And Other Fictions

 It is rare that my family and I
write to each other nowadays,
twice a year we have nothing to say
so we send each other a cliched picture
the flatness of which says more
than the few words that get written.

But recently I was sent a personal letter
'Those of us that are left are all alright
in our different ways' it summarised..

I thought about this now all-female set up,
and my mind went back to my favourite
situation comedy of the 1980's; 'After Henry'.
There three generations of women thrived
with no man in sight, beyond the gay man
who ran the book shop one of the women worked in.

I thought how much I would like to have been
the gay man who would have been the listening ear
for the women in my family. Through me
they would find their arguments settled.
I was certainly bookish enough.... 

But my family would have none of it
and preferred their malcontents unsettled,
including being audibly homophobic,
whilst knowingly making some males
in the family gay, and then denying it. 

What hope of awareness?
What value in improvement
when implicitly understanding
denies you entry, for being a man?
Never mind accepts your sexuality....