Long Enough
Things to say when people ask how long you and your deceased partner were together...
read or listen:
Things to say when people ask how long you and your deceased partner were together:
Long enough to choose to go to the grocery store with her, so I wouldn’t miss her too much while she shopped.
Long enough to know the way his smell was different at night than it was in the morning.
Long enough to be stupidly jealous about how she talked to that guy on the phone that one time.
Long enough to cherish the moment I told them my very last secret, the one I don’t tell anyone.
Long enough to dream about him every night for months, staying in bed as long as I could so I wouldn’t have to face the truth that he lived only in my dreams.
Long enough to have an unspeakable sorrow nest within me the moment I learned she died, that has still not moved, all of these years later.
Long enough to picture exactly what he was like when he was very young.
Long enough to cling to my sorrow, because it feels like that is all that is left of her.
Long enough to forgive him for all of his crimes in the bathroom, even forgetting to put down the seat {only sometimes}.
Long enough to buy her favorite meal at our restaurant on the anniversary of our first date there, and not eat it, imagining she will.
Long enough to know in my bones he was the one.
Long enough to talk to her every day, believing she is answering me somehow, somewhere.
Long enough to love and be broken by love.
or just
not long enough.
You are gifted.I’m not a huge poetry fan but I love reading your poems!
Whoooo Tim. You write from inside the bones of grief, and love. Your understanding, invitation, and spoken truth trancends dimensions. Thank you for continuing to ply us with this gorgeousness, so we might understand (as far as that is possible) too.