He’d stared at the silver screen so long
He thought he was going blind,
For a fortnight after his wife had gone
He thought he would lose his mind.
She’d snatched her purse from the window ledge
And said that she’d not be late,
‘I’ll just call in to the grocery store,
Then call on my sister, Kate!’

An hour went by and he scratched his head
While watching the cricket score,
Then two, and three put the sun to bed,
He went and stood by the door,
The Moon rose up at eleven or so,
It shone on an empty street,
And Kate replied to his mobile call,
‘I’ve not seen Jane for a week!’

There wasn’t a lot he could say to that
For Kate would have played it straight,
She wouldn’t lie for her sister Jane,
She had enough on her plate.
A drunken husband, threatening her
Each time that he laid one on,
And Kate had whispered to Jane, ‘I wish,
He’d pack up his things, be gone!’

Sam went to report to the police next day,
One lost, or wandered or strayed,
(The cop had smirked to his mate out back,
‘Perhaps she went to get laid?’)
‘It’s not like her, she’s a homely type,
But something has gone amiss,
She left three bags at the grocery store
And she’s not done that, ‘til this.’

Once back at home on the Internet
He checked on her Facebook page,
Her smiling face looked back at him yet,
Making him more dismayed,
A man had posted a Timeline rant,
Had posted the previous day:
‘I love you Jane, and I’m deep in pain,
I’m coming to take you away.’

The face of the man was indistinct
Was hidden in deepest gloom,
He must have taken the photograph
At night, in a dim-lit room,
The name that he used was ‘Love-Will-Out’
But surely that couldn’t be,
For Jane, he thought, was a simple soul,
‘She wouldn’t be false to me!’

He caught a glimpse of her now and then
As he wandered, page to page,
She’d left a trail as she trawled back when
And he felt a gathering rage.
A ‘like’ on a friend she used to have,
A comment that made no sense,
‘I need a map’ was the one remark
That had kept him in suspense.

‘I don’t know where,’ she’d written up there,
Elsewhere, ‘or where I am.’
‘Somebody’s following close behind
But I keep looking for Sam.’
Snatches of words that made no sense
He would see as they flashed on by,
And through the runnels of Facebook tunnels
He’d see that same grim guy.

So still he stares at the silver screen
Though he thinks he’s going mad,
She seems to be there on the Facebook scene,
(In a way, that makes him glad).
But he’ll never rest ‘til she comes back home
To end that feeling of pain,
Whenever I ask if he’s coming out,
He says, ‘I’m following Jane!’

David Lewis Paget