stoic suit man

14.3.26

Back in Summer when I was enjoying home,

My mother introduced me to a man known as ‘Stoic Suit Man’

We leant on the kitchen countertop, and gazed outside of the window

At the phenomenon with such an on the nose title

Passing by the most vibrant daffodils, bobbing their heads to greet him,

He offered no reply to them,

And kept on walking

My mother was aghast and short of breath,

As she went on with more and more examples

Of this man’s average nature

“See, see, one time, he crossed paths with the mailman,”

“Mailman said his greetings, and it was as if Stoic Suit Man could barely see him!”

I bobbed my head, as she described this man so austerely

That I thought that he’d made her upset personally

“He gets home at such odd hours, it disrupts the dogs, and they start howling!”

The man was long gone now, and yet she won’t stop hounding him

“The whole street got together for a party and invited him,”

“Yet he insisted that he couldn’t spare some time for it!”

Whatever this man is, I don’t care much for it

So I left my mother steaming,

Like the pot of coffee she had made before that

Autumn came, and I had to leave summer behind,

Along with the odd sightings of Stoic Suit Man

That I had come to admire

As I was on the doorstep, about to leave,

I had spotted the man himself, facing the stump of a tree

After all of this time, he had stopped to look

At the life that he was living

I called out to him, in suspicious worry

And he told me that in his exhaustion,

He had only just realized that the tree that he had played under when he was little

Had been cut down this autumn

His eyes were tender with memories

And mine were averted to his hastily done-up dress shirt,

Which was pinned to his staff ID card

I silently cursed my mother, as he drove away

To another shift in paradise.