It was a graveyard and overcast sky
and I sat with book and accordian in hand,
hearing the world with its screams
swallow up around me.
The people whom I had loved and lost,
Papa with his silver eyes
Mama her sharp tongue and tough love
Rudy whose hair the colour of lemons
and questioned why, the living and dead,
worlds apart, yet both did not have a choice.
I stood and screamed so that everything shook
the burning rubble and ash and dust
willing my words to bring it all back
but it did not come, and my breath rose in gasps.
Death had looked me in the eye and said,
“It’s not time yet.”
I would shut my eyes to the world
only decades later.
I will understand that there was hate and pain
there was sadness
but even more so, there was love and joy.
I will know that the people I loved had reason
to kiss goodbye
whether it was their own hurt
or saw it as a necessity,
but they were never truly gone from me
always somewhere nearby,
in the thick and thin
frail and worn
of times.
I would learn
to forgive Death that day.
I will understand that
and I will be hurt,
but I will be okay.

~

Not all deaths are sad.
Some, meant to ease their own pain,
Are called freedom.
While some,
Meant to ease the pain of others,
Are called love.

© BT

When the water flows
It runs with rippled chaos
And endless beauty
The blue body reflected surface
Crashes to white against
The hardened rocks of death
Yet it still sprints at full speed
Despite the river's debris

The persistence of the current
Enlightens the perseverance within me

I read myself through
The morning haze
With weary bones
And cloudy daze
Then the afternoon
Passed me by
In my journal wrote
"Let me cry"
But the sun fell
In great orange colors
And in my soul laid
The warmth of 21 summers
Soon after the celestial sparkles
Filled my eyes full
Sitting with my heavy eyes
I knew I was a fool