In Memoriam: Three Seashells On Your Chest: A Poem

I put my hands on your tree.

I leaned against it. I kissed your

Face goodbye, the face that I never

Expected to be dead right in front of

Me, that I would muster up the courage

To look at, approach, but you are my brother,

And you were never alone, not in space, not in

Time, the wounds on your skin hurt me,

The words sealing off your life burned me alive.

 

This pain has the power to eat one’s heart out,

Devour someone heart and soul, I won’t choke on it.

I will give it the opposite power, the power of your life,

The power of love, of you rippling into each and everyone

Of us, growing with you, within, around, us, entirely,

Wholeheartedly, I will muster up that courage, I will not suffocate,

I will not swallow this wave of endless suffering and

Devastating sadness, I will find its language, I will cure it

And let it fly back into the world, let it be an echo of your voice,

And I will listen to you in the wind, in the clouds that move above me,

In the air that goes into my lungs, your name that lives on in my body.