In Memoriam

                 by Sam Padovani

 

Dedicated to Charles RG III

"Goodbye"
"I forgive you"
"I'm not angry"
"I love you"

They're all the words
I wish I'd said to you
But just seven years ago
I missed my chance

They're all words
Just words
Collections of sounds and syllables
That's all…

That can't be all

They mean something
They have to mean something
Or this is just vapid print
They have to tell a story
And so they do

But this time,
This time I can't go back
I can't rewrite my ending
I can only pretend to be okay with it
I can only try to understand it

I missed my chance seven years ago
So now I'll scream those words into the void
The empty void called loss
And all that lies after

Knowing they'll only echo back to me,
Wondering if they'll ever reach you,
I'll scream them until I can only whisper them
And they'll linger on my lips from that day on