Grief - poem

Grief. 

One day you’re here, you are talking, joking and laughing,

The world seems at peace, birds singing and flying. 

The flowers all have colour

And the trees are rich with leaves 

The sky is the bluest of blues 

And you are here, just in reach. 

And the it all changed, so quick, in just a split second 

The world became so stormy, a new horizon beckoned. 

The colours, they dulled, fresh scents faded

A must, a fog rolled in, the peace was tainted. 

I don’t know how I lost you, when you said your final words 

I wander, if I had known they’d be your last, would I have held onto them so close? 

If I had known that the last time we spoke

Would be the last time id hear your voice,

Would I have picked the phone up and felt so happy, and eagerly rejoiced? 

If I had known the last time I got a letter in the post

With your immaculate handwriting

Would I have savoured the beautiful words a little longer

Seen how they hold such beauty and shining. 

If I had known the last time I’d seen you, would be the last time for good

Would I have ever stopped hugging you? 

Would I have tried harder, listened, understood? 

You were here one day, and gone the next

And all I have to hold are your letters, our memories

Of the late night chatters

When everyone else was asleep

The secret garden we laid in

Feeling so at peace. 

The stories you told me, the adventures you had travelled

The people you had met and the 

Wars you had battled. 

I have the voicemails you left me

When I didn’t reach the phone

And the parcels that lifted me

When I so badly missed home. 

I wrap myself in the blanket you sent me

Despite it being the warmest day of the year

With your comforting words ‘keep your heart warm my dear’. 

I know I couldn’t know, I couldn’t predict what happened

I can’t understand how one minute you are here and the next you have vanished. 

I attempt to console myself, in anyway you would’ve

But I am quick to realise, it’s a void I will never fill. 

People say grief, it lessens in time

You learn to hold onto the good memories only 

I’ll somehow create a manageable, less painful paradigm. 

But there is a chasm in my life, in my heart and soul

The reality that you are gone, I cannot control. 

If I could have just one more conversation,

One more hug, one more letter, one more word

Maybe it’d hurt less, id feel some kind of closure. 

But I know that’s not possible 

For if I got to be with you again, for one last show

I know, oh I know I would never let go.