Just a strange whimsical thing entered for the Phoenix Awards contest. FFN eats up all formatting so I won't bother to put up the one which got 2nd place.
Warning: Poet I am not. As you can see.

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you see yourself in ten years

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After a decade with the most patient mother in London
Her effect finally wears on him enough
To put away resentment, resignation
(even longing)
and sit down to catalogue the most legendary man in London.

1. November 5th
2. (a swiped video-chip, six men decimated in three minutes: excellent technique though weaponry is perhaps, he notes, too romantic)
3. Identity substitution (all music, art, books: very generic)
4. A scar above mum's left ankle
5. Flawed

Flawed? she questions from behind his shoulder
No, wait, don't answer. Drink up, please.

6. Cruel

(silence) Then, Why did you write that?

7. Fell in love

Honey? Answer me.

8. In unreciprocated love

You would think he has killed someone
By the way she turns and walks away with glass of milk
And pills still in her hand.
Perhaps he is not supposed to be old enough to understand lust
yet.

(did he not ask her to read Emotional Biology for
bedtime stories enough times?
He does not need a father.
even though she is not a very good mother)

(But he is not a very good son either and
they work out just fine. Love needs no words
and there are pages to fill in his notebook)

Your father, she says when he collapses beside her, was ruthless.
Merciless as mercury, flawed as mortality. But never cruel.
(A small white lie, but his fingers stay still)
If I had told him about you, I am sure
He— he would have loved you very much.

-- I thought I was a mistake?

It is hard to be subtle in sign language;
someone has died in her face again.
He has never been able to tell whether she is heartbroken
or simply dispassionate: the emptiness always feels the same
like their spaces between. He guesses,

-- I don't mind. Don't be upset.

After the silence
She takes him by his thin shoulders
and helps him onto his bed where, belly-down
they take turns writing the list. She leaves no. 6
but puts a careful black line through the last
and rewrites

8. Left no locked doors.

and he:

9. Left a fashion for cloaks.

and she, smiling:

10. Gentle and terrible.

and he:

11. More legacy than man.

and she:

12. But gave me the best of his legacies.

and he, squirming from her tickles:

13. Though, really, if I am his best--

and then the sheets are shaking
beneath the earthquake of their stomach-giggles
(she kisses on the nose, I love you, sweetheart, always, always)
and he is hoping that it really was dispassion all along
When something wet smears the side of his cheek.

After a decade with the most resilient mother in London,
His presence finally wears on her enough
To forget not to grieve, ache for
(even in laughter)
The most resented and missed idea of London.