Aged six, I think, charging through the front door,
With a mesh of macaroni painted and glued in the shape of a car
Stuck out at the end of two tiny arms:
Here's what I made for you!

Then a childhood flies by and before you can think, then we were four-
Now only three.
Perhaps you are off pottering about, in a room out of view
On some eternal Sunday afternoon
Having left, as you were wont to do
Your tea going cold on the counter.

I step back through the door, now twenty-six
And you're looking out from the kitchen,
Quietly smiling, golden sun painting shapes on your loose old tee,
And see me as a man, a bank account, two pips a master's degree
and a car, achievements won
just as messy as the spaghetti twenty years before
That I made for you.