What would I take with me

if you breathed your last tomorrow,

aside from memories, dashed and broken

now upon the storm, driven by despair,

what on Earth would I take

with me

as I searched in vain for you?

 

A wide open world with a single aim

to witness in the flesh

all that I could in the year

and a day I would allow myself

to exist in mourning, whilst blisters

tore at my back and festering wounds

bubbled and scorched at the edge

of my spine and skin, where blood,

pus and regret freely mingled

as I smiled with hollow eyes

at the world you could only see

through me.

 

Everything I have is worthless

on such a trip of reminisce,

everything bound up in a molten lava fury

and acid like tears that sting and burn

when I think of sitting in tea shops, content

and full of wonder in silence; you, your smile

having deserted me when you exhaled

your last, the only companion I would wish for

in the darkness.

 

What could I take on my own final quest

that would not bind me to the inevitable,

the tangible feeling of one more day,

just one more, one, one, one

forever and onwards till my own slow breath

overtakes me and I silently slip

into the soundless void?

 

There is nothing, save clothes to become

a wandering shell in, to save pity

and laughter and disgrace on my naked body

and the stones we collected from trips

hand in hand, to put them back

in their rightful place

so they too could return

to familiar surroundings; stones,

polished natural stones

in my pocket, counted off one by one

and returned to Krakow, Budapest,

Inverness and the silence of Heaven.

 

There is nothing I would take with me,

except your smile

and a pile of stones to put back in the Earth.

 

Ian D. Hall 2016