Poetry and Death

Here's another excerpt from my upcoming poetry collection.

He Died

The words stilled every heart in the room.

When she was called out of class

by two friends

I had thought nothing of it.

When she came back in,

to retrieve her books,

I did not look up.

I was engrossed in a sketch

of a girl

alone

in a dark forest,

and did not see the pain

till those two words

fell

broken,

from her lips,

as if they had also

died.

“He died.”

She was not a friend,

I knew her name, her voice, her friends,

but no more.

She was not a friend,

but the pain in her voice

brought tears to my eyes.

I still did not see her face,

but her words echoed in my ears.

“He died.”

As she left again,

her friends followed,

sharing her grief,

as sobs floated back to us

through the closing door.

A stunned silence.

Uncertain, unreal.

The fraility of mortality

painfully recalled.

“He died.”

(10th grade, 01/29/1993, 2:00pm)

Comments on He Died

That was pretty much how it happened.

I never found out who it was who’d died, or what he was to that girl.

She left the room, and I wrote the poem.

I can’t decide if I like the line breaks in this. On one hand, they sort of evoke the disjointed, sudden distruption we all felt. On the other, I may have gone a little overboard on a few of them. Eh. That’s the fun with free verse. Easy to do, hard to do well, and very subjective.

I like seeing into people’s houses at night, when the lights are on. I’m not saying I go creeping up to windows or anything, but just as you’re driving or walking past, you can look through the open curtains and see little slices of people’s lives, and remember that those houses are full of people you may never meet, who have lives that have nothing to do with you. It puts things into perspective.

That day in class was sort of the dark side of that reality voyeurism. Here was loss and pain that had nothing to do with me, but I hurt because she was hurting. Yet I could set the hurt aside, whereas for her the wound would linger until the pain became so much a part of her that she didn’t notice it much anymore.

I hadn’t lost anyone myself yet, at that age. I have since. And people will tell you that the pain goes away, that the hurt stops with time. I don’t think it does. I think you just get used to it.

Image by Stuart Mills, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Bad with the Good

Just when you think you've got things figured, Life throws you a curve ball.

For those of you wondering, I was already running behind on my word count goal. I had resigned myself to the fact that I was not going to get the current story done on time.

This afternoon I received word that my cousin had died this morning. He's only 4 years older than me, 36 years old. He was the closest thing I had to a brother, and one of my favorite people in the whole world.

I am in absolute shock, down to my core. Seemed like I hit anger and denial and grief all at once. I can't imagine that he's gone - my brain just won't wrap around the concept.

After a good long cry, I spent some time outside. It was a beautiful day - sunny but with big fluffy white clouds, not too hot, not too humid, and wonderfully breezy. I sat on the ground in the shade of a tree and dug my fingers through the grass until I touched the earth. I closed my eyes and centered, connected with the world around me, reconnected with the larger All and knew the peace that comes with it.

And then a mosquito reminded me that pain is part of being alive.

I know that part of my heart is forever broken. But death is part of life, pain is part of living. I'm alive. He's not. And even though it seems like the world can't possibly be the same beautiful place it was yesterday when he was still alive, I know it is. The world goes on. Life goes on. It's just us individuals that stop. And as callous as that sounds, I take comfort in it.

I know that the funeral is going to be one of the worst experiences of my life. That I'm still somewhat in shock, and the true pain of his loss still hasn't hit yet. That for months (if not years) to come I will find myself crying for seemingly no reason, that things which once did not distress me will call the pain to mind and I'll have to wrestle with it all over again. That one of the few people on this planet who truly understood me, who was friend and brother and co-conspirator and soulmate, is gone from me, and never again in this life will I see his smile or hear his laugh.

And yet, I know that life goes on. That it is no shame or betrayal to admit that this too shall pass. And that some day I will face it again, and some day it will be my turn to pass from this life.

I love this life, and this world. I'll take the pain. But I don't have to like it.

Hug someone you love today.