what dante said ~ 1986/age 16
I cannot see your face in mine,
aside of the warmth in the smile we shared --
but parts of me seem to echo you,
parts I never understood.
Dante
tells of suicide being less of a crime when it is for love,
but is that what it was for?
For here with me
you had more love than I had ever given,
were you afraid it might dissolve?
Surely it has not -- for though you have been gone
for an eternity of dreams,
still, I mourn.
I felt it when you died,
hard, when I swallowed my heart and went back to sleep.
And though I knew you lay in that box,
I could only see you smiling. Maybe
vif I had seen more than the holes in the wall,
the holes in your head, the blood on the bed
I might believe.
But from the life you gave me, I still feel you inside.
Though I wept for months,
waking in sweat to images of your bloood, your ruined face,
I kept the life you gave to mme.
And now I am watching someone use my strength to survive,
yet I have stayed long enough to see that he needs less and less
each day
I see him pull a little bit away each day
and wonder if this is what you feared.
I wonder
if he will need more and more
leaving me less than I need to survive?
This time, I must save my own life
derive it from a strength
I never knew I had, and leave what I have to him
as a gift I cannot retract. This much
you taught me, and I would return to you
what you lent me if I could,
but no amount of life would awaken you from such a sleep as yours.
Someday, when you and I
join again, we might be able
to derive that life from things
I hope to leave behind from us both.
because for as long as I live,
so you shall be one of the living, for I still cannot
let you die just yet.
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