I think of you. Your body, alone, wanting
To be left alone, in a chapel, a side room,
Where they’d keep someone like you,
Someone without life, someone that I
Loved, I think of you on an altar, my heart
Takes me there, to you, I never wanted you
To be cold.
I never saw you in that white dress.
I heard your sounds, the mouth, how
You held on or tried to let go, I couldn’t
Believe that this was you. How I stood in
A garbage yard surrounded by overfilled
Dumpsters when I heard the words, the seal
Upon your ended life, I stood amongst the
Fizzling rain that wouldn’t commit.
I thought you’d come all the way to see
Me, walk through the door that I held open for
You, your body, all the memories attached to it.
I thought I sensed you there. With me.
Still, less and less. I can’t believe that the girl
Within you, the one snacking, the one laughing
At dirty jokes, the one putting sugar on strawberries,
Was dead. The woman who held me when the world
Became too heavy. The woman who didn’t run away
From the intensity of pain.
I remember you. I remember how you were.
When you were trying to be the best version of
Yourself that you could be. You wanted to be rejoined
With your father. For a long time, life had been a drag.
I never fully knew what had happened to you, what
Monsters grew within you. I saw you hang on to life
Less and less. But we could always laugh. We’d find
That comfort together.
I held your glasses in my hand, red, your skin,
Your eyes, without glasses, obsolete, on the nightstand.
The loose change in the weirdest corners of the room.
In old purses. I bought your favourite truffles with it
And thought of you. The taste you left behind.
The white hair and skin in your hairbrush, the books
About cats and the secret language of trees, the powder
Embracing your skin, the scent that is yours forevermore.
Croque-Melpomene 