
That Poem

My condolences in advance
When dawn dawns
When your light proves up
How you’ve chosen one who doesn’t choose you
When without masks, you’ve given freely of yourself
In vulnerability
In honesty
Maybe messy, but as a firework
To a soul-less soul
One steeped in habits of hiding and avoidant attachment
Devoid of words or a will to stay
Champion yourself, champion, and know you’ve fought the good fight
Though you fought alone
Though you shadow boxed
Know that next time, there’ll be no next time
No room for their prose in your poem
This was not a test
Not a joke, nor anecdote
Nor well performed script
These hallways and hearts
Will miss you
But this
Godspeed
You were born for
Neither let your ears cry
Nor hear goodbye
When you go, you leave
Your heartprint
Here
Take us, also
The Voices we found while together
I need to think they know each other
They, the other-worldlies
The lost-in-noticing-ers
With vocabularies of gods, speculating
I see them and fall mesmerized
Them, with foreheads furrowed
With wanting, wondering
How the world’s this way or that
I crave their impetus
Their, them, that electrified being
That doesn’t seek convention
Or need to be defined
She,
I think,
Would be Stephanie
A love I didn’t know I needed
A friend from a Friend
Both martyred
For, what are true friends for?
She,
Stephanie,
Would have gifted me
A kind word
A wise word
Both since otherwise elusive in my world
For, looking back, what did I expect?
She,
Steph, we’d have called her,
Would be a poem -nay, is a poem
A poem and sister to a brother
A work of art with no end, they are
Both Epic story-songs
For, hear thou, their lyrical air?
She,
Stephanie,
Would be safe from me now
A sword of truth having pierced my soul
A prayer of forgiveness asked
Both to self and sin, I desire to die
For what, but abandonment, is there?
She,
Stephanie,
Would be thirty soon
A soul eternal
A girl, a woman
Both alive
For, ‘tho I don’t deserve, why too am I?
Kindness is why the World
Rises or falls
Thrives or survives
Why after the fairy tale ends
We walk
Together or apart
Kindness, it means the world
Kindness is whether
I serve you donuts
You serve me coffee
Whether when the sun dips low
We rest
Fine or fitfully
Kindness no matter the weather