Member Poem

I find echoes of you in the rays of the dying sun. The way you like to sit by the window, the light of its beams dancing upon your thinning hair; crooked eyes and creaking shoulders weighed down by hurt and an unrepentant tumour. I look at your gnarled hands as you sew, tangled like this grief that clings to me like a lover, choking the space between us. We soak in the silence, in that moment between light and darkness. You look at me, and I look back, trying to give you some of my hope, trying to temper the inevitable—this illness that keeps demanding our goodbye. I cannot bear your exit, you see, i.e. for the sun to fall out of my sky// for the tree on which I lean to crumble// for the world to be deprived of another promise// for the dream of you to end.
(its fitting then, that I was not there when you were lost; the darkness of my despair almost shrouded the stars).
But after (after) after, I find that you are still there. Emptied into the corners of my eyes. Buried in those dark, quiet places the mind slips over like water over stone, a wispy figure that doesn’t vanish even when I look too hard. You linger in my shadow, one step behind but never far. The sound of your voice plays on the wind. You are everywhere you should not be, traces of you smudged in every corner of my world.
So now, I sit next to the window—in the seat that once was yours. I watch as the light fades. I soak in the sunset and the quiet, and I take upon my shoulder the cloak of credence. For I see now, that you sewed it just for me.