Here’s my permission to skip this poem and post. I can’t think of a more depressing way to end the year.
I’ve been thinking about grief a lot lately, perhaps because of my chronic nostalgia, or the holidays, or something else entirely. So, I wrote this poem about a moment that has haunted me, a moment I regret, a moment I often rehearse in my mind. In a backward way, getting this out in words and sharing it brings some healing for me. Perhaps you’ve had a moment (or hundreds) like this one. Maybe you should put it into words.
And Every Day Since
The phone came to life
In small, desiccated movements.
I looked down and saw your name
And knew again what I’d known
For years but couldn’t articulate.
I was fourteen, but even then I knew that
To answer would be to lose
What I’d lost
A thousand times before.
To hear your drowning words:
Half-thought, dizzied, dulled
And drained and emptied;
Caught, addled by chemicals
Strangled and strangling—
That would be worse. A knot too tightly tied.
So that old lime-green phone (you know,
The kind that slid open and turned on its side),
It rattled on in my lap,
As I rattled down the road in the passenger seat
Of Kyle’s disintegrating, halting Chrysler,
Sitting and seized in a kind of grief no boy should know;
And I let it go to voicemail.
And that day, and every day since
I lost you.
And you lost me.
I’d die to hear your voice
Just one last time;
To see that name light up that old phone, and know
It was actually you.
If, for some strange reason, you enjoyed this poem, subscribe to Casey’s blog here to get emailed new work.
Revival and Renewal 
Leave a reply to cmdwyer Cancel reply