He'd only been gone for a few hours when I started to wonder
if we'd said out last words to one another
"...but you're awesome" still ringing in my ears,
reminding me that I wasn't.

The next time, we said goodbye without words -
tangled, sleepless, uncertain
painful and incomplete.
I boarded an airplane across an ocean
while he walked off
into another life.

Until finally, I know, rather than wondering about
this goodbye, ultimately, probably, unfinished
and yet -
"I hope we can stay friends"
we lied through out teeth
Trying to pretend it didn't hurt so much.

The last words we'd said to one another hung there
suspended by the weight of the ones I hadn't.
Bowled over, suddenly -
I began to remember who I was
Though who I was was no longer who I'd been.

The light was still growing in the morning
My mother gripped her shoulder, rousing with gentle shakes
Her first words, a chorus of moans -
the twisted agony of living.

Holding crepe paper hands, we cared in trivial words
Telling stories, sitting close, trying not to press too hard.
Every piece of her hurt.
Every piece of me hurt too -

"We should sing..." I whispered, as if to speak aloud
would end the spell holding us in that moment.
Choken and throaty with grief, half-remembered melodies emerged.
Birds to the waiting ears of my grandmother,
paper-thin and sponge-watered, crying out in hurt.
Dying is easy - it's living that's hard.
And with every line, I wondered
what my last words to her would be.

As the hour grew near and I rose to leave,
I stepped close
I kissed her papery cheek
I looked into her half-closed eyes and promised,
"I love you".
And through the haze of time and space,
in spite of every other word she'd lost, my grandmother
gasping and starting -
replied "I love you".

And love,
raw and peaceful and vulnerable and frail and desperate love
Holds onto our hands, softly singing
while we die.