For the first time in nearly seven years
I find myself outside the concert hall
where Verdi's Requiem was last performed
while we were soaked right to the bone by rain,
and tangled in my grief you couldn't touch,
and here I am again, in fall, alone.
The scattered people slowly coalesce,
all drifting in to shelter from the storm,
their frost-bitten hands prying at my heart,
fireflies searching for a matchless warmth,
they glow, subside, and glow again, and hurt -
shake up the jar, displace the emptiness.
Today I find my meter - underfoot,
of course it trips me like I once would cling
like a young cicada, stuck to your skirt.
I found your birthday card for me, you see -
one that went unopened, unintended,
tucked inside a book you let me borrow.
Now something real is hanging in the air,
a trace of you, shaped like a missing rib,
an echo of an echo of a laugh.
I turn around, and though you're somewhere else,
this hour spent with just a word from you
is fuller than a symphony of friends.
This is the healing of a broken wing,
this is the universe made manifest,
this is the grace of not knowing what's next,
the wonder that would keep the stars apart,
while wishing it was not asking too much,
if it could just survive outside my chest.
I bring you back to life, just now and then:
I hear your voice in every song I sing,
and mirrors show your eyes. I style your hair.
I sign your name (and mine) with this same pen.
For everywhere I wasn't, I atone,
your afterimage blurred by time and tears.
You'd have sworn least said is soonest mended:
The book and card will be there tomorrow,
and you won't be more gone than you are now,
and no, the world won't end if I don't put
the feeling into words tonight somehow.
You also would have listened patiently.
The moon slides down the stair, to see who's there -
the pale reflections of our better selves,
but memory can't take away the sting,
So maybe I won't think of how this ends,
(a lie, of course, but please forgive the fib)
and someday we'll just become everything.
Iron Noder 2023, 19/30