I never believed that you could disappear.
Whilst you were standing against the working surface,
Your hands holding knives, the head framed by the closed
Window, your shadow on the floor, next to me,
Away from mine, looking up at you, your back, your unseen
Tears. The apron that I loved, the rising scent, in all the rooms,
The work taken for granted, the dirt on your hands,
All the love you could scrape together in your heart.
I miss her body. The freshness of her skin, the way she walked
On the side of the street, the way she sat on the wall, eating,
Snacking, looking, never into the void, she had been full, and
It felt so good to come home to her. I choose to remember her in
Certain ways. How her body moved in nature, how she laughed
With every single particle of her body, her face when told a joke.
And I feel you still, the hopes you put into furniture,
The life you tried to call back into existence,
To start anew, all alone, and never ever on your own.
How you wanted to give in to peace and reconstruction,
Tapestry and colour, carpet and flowers.
You sought shelter, retiring from the earth, the grass, the past.
But you couldn’t get your head out of endless moments
Of retrospective, they wouldn’t let you go, replaying
The same parts over and over again, making yourself braver,
Making different decisions, letting yourself speak up and against,
Stepping into your own power, become yourself truly,
But you became a vessel for regret and guilt and unfelt bitterness.
And yet you shone to me like nobody else, in your own ways,
I wanted you whole, that way, imperfect.
You’d never let anyone in your head.
Maybe that’s for the better, I might not know.
And you called my name, again and again,
Vanishing from one world to another,
Reliving scenes from the past that I could not see
I just listened to your voice and absorbed it
Knowing that I would never hear it again, from your mouth,
Just in echoes across my own mind.
Croque-Melpomene 