Unsent letters to a friend, no.2
...
You said something offhand that changed my life
Sitting on the floor backs to cool metal lockers, lunchtime
I missed so many developments in our group of friends
I felt the sky would fall for all I somehow hadn't seen
Lamenting at how much had changed
The shallow space of a week gone by
My own time spent galavanting - clubs and activities and other people.
And you, not unkindly, frustrated fairly, snapped easily at me,
The world doesn't stop turning just because you aren't here to see it.
My egocentric child's view interrupted
Geocentric scholars reminded of the sun
Heliocentric dominance a fact of life no matter how we want to deny the truths we find so disturbing.
(I am not the centre of the universe.)
Since then I've taken to wondering
How the world swallows my absence when I am not around,
Is my absence felt like a yawning hunger
(am I missed?)
Is it a hiccup that catches repeatedly
A momentary burp which releases easily?
Is it a stone in the pit that won't shake loose
Or is my absence easily digested with the fresh in-season produce?
I used to wonder what if I kept walking
Past the yard past the block past the field
What if I never stopped until no one knew my face
Until I was so far away I might not exist at all.
My whole life with my feet on the ground
Always running running running -
This is not a letter on loss
On grief
On selfishness
This is a letter on leaving.
Lamenting as a child about the moments I was missing
The friendships busy just existing
Because my feet draw me away no matter how I tell them stay.
I don't wonder any longer.
My feet took me to the other end of the earth
As if to prove it is in fact so round
As if to prove that yes
It does still turn
Even when I'm not there.
I don't wonder anymore about my absence because I know now.
It's not my absence divided by a multitude that matters
It's all your absence to me which can't be swallowed.
I was born with a bruised soul
An emptiness that bid me run and so I do
But it doesn't mean I don't miss you.
