Gone Missing

I was the missing son who
lived under his mother’s feet,
not the dead son who drove
her crazy from daylight to
sundown with a father who
begged her to shape up and
fly right in the eyes of God.
He had been a farmer’s boy
with a nose for local history.
She had been a city girl with
the hands of a poker player.
I was the skinny kid who
drank extra rich milk and
loved crunching on hard candy,
not the unborn son who was
a genius in the making and
would have loved to pin his
parents to the wall like Amazon beetles .