…you should have been the one to live,

you should have walked tall and taken on the world

with all its prejudiced malice and spite for

we both know you would have made so much more

of the life once glimpsed on both our parts.

I can only offer false machismo, to the point

where I gave that up as bad idea, a notion unbecoming

at the age of seventeen, perhaps the moment

where we said goodbye on the corner, only to dream of each

other’s possible lives, still holding a part of ourselves close,

you with contempt even as I allowed you to die slowly,

withering away, never to savour the touch of rebirth.

I cannot ask for the forgiveness I seek for that would

require bringing you back

to life and then where would you be,

it’s too late to swap now and you would have less Time,

less contemplation and understanding of why I was the one

who had to live.

 

Would I choose to have laid my life down for you?

Would I allow your lips to kiss and add life to life,

to breathe the air or would I have hammered down

the nails on the coffin I built for you.

Sweet dreams, for in mine

you live as much as I crumple to dust.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015