I would my life were a movie,
that on the anniversary of your death
I could ride my bike, straight-backed,
hair blowing in the manufactured wind,
to your grave, with a perfect bouquet of flowers
perched in my basket, or else
zipped perilously into a backpack;
and, arriving at your headstone,
donate their impermanent beauty
to your memory, placing them
artistically
beneath the singular, factual phrases
that hold all remembrance of you
in their cold stone embrace.
But your ashes rest beneath the waves:
your tomb is the sea,
the sky your eternal epitaph;
and my heart has no physical place
to fix my mourning to.
And so I wander - for I must!
I cannot tie myself to the earth
when to the earth you are not tied,
when the wind carries your voice
and the rivers flow
with what once was your laughter.
The whole world is such a very big grave
for someone once so real as you.
Feb 14, 2013
Feb 14, 2013 at 12:40 AM UTC
I would my life were a movie,
that on the anniversary of your death
I could ride my bike, straight-backed,
hair blowing in the manufactured wind,
to your grave, with a perfect bouquet of flowers
perched in my basket, or else
zipped perilously into a backpack;
and, arriving at your headstone,
donate their impermanent beauty
to your memory, placing them
artistically
beneath the singular, factual phrases
that hold all remembrance of you
in their cold stone embrace.
But your ashes rest beneath the waves:
your tomb is the sea,
the sky your eternal epitaph;
and my heart has no physical place
to fix my mourning to.
And so I wander - for I must!
I cannot tie myself to the earth
when to the earth you are not tied,
when the wind carries your voice
and the rivers flow
with what once was your laughter.
The whole world is such a very big grave
for someone once so real as you.
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