THE HIDDEN

I walk home from school
with a paper valentine,
roadside flowers,
a pretty leaf

to surprise her.
She watches me at dinner
eat the hamburger she made,
kick the leg of the chair
until she says stop.

She has lettuce.  Or nothing.
A secret between us, the half
gallon strawberry ice cream 
she spooned from the carton.  
I helped eat it gone, the long 
afternoon, the quiet house.

Jonathan B. Aibel is a recovering software engineer who lives in Concord, MA, traditional homelands of the Nipmuc.  His poems have been published, or will soon appear, in Barrelhouse, Chautauqua, Pangyrus, Lily Poetry Review, Ocean State Review, Pangyrus, and elsewhere.