b.

It’s quiet now.
There are people and children and strangers collected and sitting and circling words with days and years and past about them that aches at the bottom of your stomach;
colliding at your ears in waves like sound.
And gazes about you like shame, or sorrow. Empathetic and unknowing.
And friend you carry it like earth. Alone and together.
And love I know it is not the keys you cannot find.
It is not the first day she left you at school.
It is not a heart-like feeling.
It cannot be undone or revenged or hated or blamed like a stolen thing.
It is the nights you cannot sleep.

And these few new days are heavy.
And the sun seems dimmer in its daily devotion.
And even now you’ll hear a distant voice that’s familiar.
But the people give out identical apologies. And empty comfort.

But love there is this.

The way she brushed her hair in the mornings.
The smell of her skin.
The pitch and falter in her voice.
The sounds and touch youre imagining now.
And the empty and undone bed where she did sleep.

And she was two and five and seventeen.
And now she is only a few days old.
Because there are going to pass days and years and age.
And her hair is beginning to grow out of your head.
And specs in your eyes are turning.
And even now as you bow your head, she is changing the skin that you are in.
And you’ll grow. And as unbelievable as it is, the sun will rise again.
The days will up and down again.
Until one day the sun and amber will dart through the slits in the wallAcross your face and hair Where she has climbed unto your mirror.

And she’d never been away.
And she was brave.
She is here now.
And today they are not here because she’s passed.
But because she won.