seeking a ghost

my mother is in love
with a man who is not my father
this man did not tell me stories
he did not make my billy cart
he did not kiss my sleeping forehead
he did not teach me to tie my laces
or dry my hair after a bath
he did not take me to the circus
or teach me to drive
he did not buy me new shoes
or mend my watch
but my mother loves him
his shoes sit by the front door
his toothbrush beside the sink my father installed
and his clothes now fill my fathers side of the wardrobe
dads smell disappears slowly
sometimes i hear his photographs screaming
and secretly sometimes
i want him to haunt our house
until his smell returns