The first time I...

This one took much longer to compose. Assigned to provide sensory details to a first-time experience, as well as to reduce wordiness (the toughest part for me!), I began several times, pursuing various ideas. Holding my firstborn, entering a juvenile jail to teach, and fracturing my wrist crashing my bicycle as a boy all fell apart before they really took shape. Instead, my mind grabbed onto an experience more than two decades past. I wrestled to express precisely what was needed, and per the instructions given, I posted it for classmates and professor to consider. Then I revised it with some of their questions and suggestions in mind, though some of the revisions reflected my own dissatisfaction with the original. I share here for your consideration, "You Were Gone".

You Were Gone

You were gone long before the end,

but I knew the day had come.

Your eyes that twinkled at a private joke or scolded when I went too far,

unopened, unseeing.

Your mouth that taught me to sing and kissed away my tears,

hung open, silenced.

Your hair lost, grew curly, but again

 lay straight and limp, stuck to your head in feverish sweat.

The calming scent of your shampoo

overpowered by the stink of disease.

Your arms and hands that nursed, disciplined, comforted me,

locked unfeeling and unmoving.

Teacher, cook! musician, mentor—

lungs feebly rattling with each breath.

Gently I hugged your fragile shoulders, kissed your forehead;

“I love you, Mum.”

Fifty-one too young, seventeen too soon for goodbye,

yet

Eternity arrived. 

MP UB 9/22/13