Missing You

 

She introduced me to the pleasure of friendship,

She made me realise the pain of love.

She saw how much I hurt, what her aching had made me become.

A quivering wreck, an emotional fool!

My heart no longer still, in time with the savages drum.

The taste, tantalising and slow

Regret that I never once told her what she meant to me.

All those years from childhood to near death

And she said, “That this moment was for me, my reward.”

For friendship will prevail, it’s all that’s left.

Her face reminds me of another.

Her music fills me, every note, all to savour.

I shake and I stutter words that don’t belong,

She gently places a ravaged finger over my dry lips,

Her heart beating slowly in tune with Tori’s song.

I still see her image every day, a conjured thought

Still smiling and saying, “That it is right to cry.”

Tears flow as I whisper her name

Though she’s gone from me, perhaps never mine

And when I see her gravestone I feel no shame.

I said goodbye in a letter freshly written

Raindrops making the ink run on the flowers below

Originally red, now black like the emptiness of my heart.

I miss her, all those years we missed

To be made up fleetingly by the way we kissed.

First published in Searching For An Answer. By Ian D. Hall. Poem nominated for International Poet of the Year, 2003.