I Will Leave The Last Line For You To Fill

Art by Galaksi Sanat

I Will Leave The Last Line For You To Fill

I want it to be all of a sudden, 

for death can be a hardened gunslinger

slow as that cursed dawn 

which doesn’t (always) consider it a duty 

to dispel the dark.

            I wonder why this ridiculous thing 

            always gets to choose 

             the time and place,

             without giving us a chance to parse.

Why can’t death be a messenger -

breath for a few more days, 

time to be with the ordinary,

to say I love you one more time. 

             There’s too much at stake for what’s left behind,

             we are humans, we are fallible,

             wanting more time for the obvious good ,

             the small act we’d ignored, the word unsaid. 

I would like to die writing one last poem,

a ballad of love, bereft of regrets,

full of the incandescence you fill in me,

with the last line left for you to fill -

            I will remember nothing more,

           I will write of nothing less,

          so you can gently forget what I was all about,

          and remember me only as a glow. 

Photograph by me

Essay

One of the tragedies of growing older is how we see more and more people pass on, even as we wait for our own mortality to kick in.

Surviving loved ones is not a blessing, as we find lesser number of breaths intertwined with ours, and our hours spent in longer days.

There are several people I remember with great tenderness. Along the years the particularities have started to fade. The slant of a smile, the squelching of eyes, the way some words got spoken, the firmness of a hand on a shoulder, the moments a hug lasted. Lines of a face start fading, we forget when we last laughed, what we last said - what we regretfully didn’t.

The only thing which remains with clarity is the glow their memory evokes, the smile which comes when I think of them, and the lump which forms in my throat, when tears start to flow unabashedly.

As the years add up, and death seems more a reality than a concept, I hope even if my life doesn’t engender any remembrance, at least, to whoever who thinks of me, they find themselves filled with a glow, even if it is as small as a flame.

Photograph by me

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Hear the poem -

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If you liked this poem, consider hearing these other poems on the grief and tribulation of passing on -

She Held His Hand as He Drifted

When Breath Becomes Air

What Do I Leave Behind