Goodbye

I could not say goodbye to you,
That is my curse.

In those moments of silence,
Eyes so full of anxious expectancy,
Knowing what was left unsaid:
Could never be said,

………………….I failed you, I failed myself.

Once, once only we mythologized – our way of coping with this emptiness.
No returns, all repetitions are lies against the sky; its blank cobalt eye
A horizon too large to encompass, so we turn
Becoming this other who would know something even if it meant nothing,
Nothing at all. What remains will be erased soon enough, we know this;
And yet we would want so much more than this…

This is not pity, not even self-judgment for all we’ve been or must,
Only a sense of honesty without the farce,
Holding on to a memory even as it so fleetingly breaks
………………….Everything we were and might be.

©2021 S.C. Hickman