for gavin

by rumon

[Another friend's story has come to an end.  Too soon.  She looked mighty as she migrated throughout the apartment, settling rarely, when she did in her brief dormancy suggesting of adventures innumerable, unread pages so many that the very prospect wore you down.  She wouldn't be shelved.  Wouldn't rest.  Wouldn't abide it.  Yet now she sleeps.  And now - again - I'm struggling to find the words to write my own epilogue at the end of a novella that should have been a tome.  I search for words and, finding not new, I find these.  Another's.  (The memories are razors, my friend, still sharp as the day you left.)]

I apologize; you would have been disappointed.

One of your first lessons, so simple,

You said, “Just write.”

But I didn’t know how.

Worse, I didn’t even try.

Though I did look, I swear;

Searched within myself for something to say.

I found nothing.

Found only quiet hopes,

That silence could articulate an altered reality.

I waited in that silence for days,

Listening to the world around me,

Witnessing it speak in spectral colours,

Then sigh from day to night.

A comet, dancing low across the sky.

You were there in all of it

But you just sat quietly and smiled.

You offered me no words.

No hint of how to say good-bye.