A Whore in Holland

Moments before his father died,
he asked his mother for forgiveness
for not only losing his mind so young
but for never finding it in his later years.

For whatever reason,
she did not accept his apology
even as his last breath slowly ascended to the attic
and hovered all above the neighborhood.

Instead she immediately began
knitting the neighbor woman a pair of socks
because she is a widow who lost
all of her children during childbirth
and yet still kept her sanity.

As you can imagine, his mother's insult really
threw his father into the afterlife with a bang.

To this day, he's still so overwhelming angry,
that he regularly haunts a whore in Holland
hardly worth mentioning, except for the fact
that he had nothing to do with her "pre-death"
and she did nothing deserving of being haunted.

(In fact, they would both agree that,
scientifically and socially speaking,
she was regularly providing
an invaluable kindness to men
who are now and will surely remain
unaccustomed to feminine benevolence.)

At the end, it got so out of hand that he even
had the audacity to repeatedly spell it out for her,
in shadows and sunlight on the kitchen floor,
effectively ruining a possible ending:

"A mother has no metaphysical bond with her child."

The whore, who has likely seen it all,
even had the audacity to successfully
become the same exact woman as his wife
and ruthlessly ignore this clue entirely.

His son saw the whole thing then as a boy,
and he sees the whole thing now
as he unsuccessfully attempts to not become
the same exact man as his father.

But, for now at least he's haunting the whore
from the right side of the grave.