Clumsy Father / You Don't Love Me

When I was a girl of ten years old
I arrived home one evening
To find two policemen comforting my weeping mother
My father's body had been found washed
Up on the riverbank that evening
Later, when I was in bed
Before she kissed me goodnight
My mother whispered into my ear
"Daddy was bound to die of something
He was a very clumsy man."
That night I thought about my clumsy father
I'd never known him to have all his own fingers
During my childhood he had lost three fingers and one thumb
All lost on the circular saw at the factory where he worked
He lost his right eye after stabbing himself in it with a chisel
Whilst trying to open a tin of paint
He'd fallen from his ladder too many times to recall
And was often to be seen wearing a plaster cast on one of his limbs
My father had once mistakenly made himself a cup of tea
Using hydrochloric acid instead of water
He spoke with a lisp from then on
In the manner of his death
My clumsy father surpassed himself
He'd been mowing the lawn
When he decided to put more petrol in the lawnmower
For reasons best known to himself
He had decided to leave the mower running
Whilst pouring the fuel into it
And had somehow managed to spill some on his trousers
And set himself on fire
In a panic my father ran out of the gate at the bottom of the garden
Across a field
And down to the river
Into which he dived in an attempt to douse his burning clothes
Unfortunately he knocked himself unconscious on a rock
And drowned
You say that you love me
But I don't think that you love me
When you love someone
You don't smash their windows with a hammer
When you love someone
You do not hide in their home
And then wait until they have gone to bed
And leap on top of them whilst barking like a dog
When you love someone
You do not put glue in their hair
When you love someone
You do not steal their money
When you love someone
You don't try to set their house on fire
When you love someone
You do not phone them up
And pretend to be a psychopath in order to scare them
When you love someone
You treat them with love and affection
You do not stick pins in them and say it's acupuncture
You do not shave off their eyebrows while they are asleep
When you love someone
You do not steal their car and drive it into the canal
When you love someone
You do not take all their clothes and bury them
When you love someone
You do not give them a poisonous snake as a gift
You buy them flowers and chocolates
And you take them out for dinner
You do not take them to dog fights
You don't love me
I know you don't love me
Despite what you said in your email