Posted in Death

When Absent

Posted on by tq1695

Fistfuls of light
thrown by sombre trees
strike unlikely sentinels.

Weathered soft toys
bleached wooden trains
threadbare windmills.

Scruffy, gentle markers
soften neat inscriptions
of brutal truth.

Dearly missed
aged 16 hours.
Two days.
Three weeks.
Five months.

Kate, Anna, Kyle, Melanie
never progressed to surname
will never require differentiation.

School remains unknown
as does inequality
and betrayal.

Innocence and loss
sway quietly together
grief’s slow waltz
painful and sweet.

For the back story click Backstage
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Author:

Most of my life has been spent on the bench, occasionally called into the game by extravagance or attenuation. Waiting has turned a loner into a recorder - nondescript and inconsequential, more not noticed than overlooked - the non-vantage point of children not yet considered old enough to understand. Orphaned Islands (Un)poetry is a lifetime of picking anecdotes up and not throwing them away. Stories collected like odds and ends placed in a box in the basement, the garage, the garden shed - uncertain as to what their use might be but knowing that one day there might be one.