Tuesday, July 15, 2014

I Don't Know How to Say Good Bye

I just don't know how to say good bye. Not to Rick. Everything seems so final. It's so hard to let go. Some days I feel like it gets harder, not easier.


I hadn't written any poetry since Rick died. Until tonight. It's not my best work, considering I have a cold and was a tired, sobbing mess when I wrote it. But it says what I really feel. And it is what it is.


I don’t know how to say good bye
To all the things you are.
I parted with your toothbrush,
Your magazines, your car.

Your bathrobe hangs in silence
Against the bedroom wall.
I don’t know how to say good bye
To your sneakers in the hall.

I moved around some photos
To try to fill the space
That’s here now that you’re gone,
But they can’t replace your face.

Your glasses sit and stare at me
Like two familiar eyes.
I don’t know how to say good bye
To your shirts, your pants, your ties.

I don’t know how to say good bye
To seven happy years.
I don’t know how to lie in bed
Without the company of tears.

I know how to say, “Good morning,”
And I know how to say, “Good night.”
I know how to say, “I love you,”
Because they all seem right.

I know how to say, “I miss you,”
Or “I’ll see you soon,”
But I don’t know how stand here
Just staring at the moon.

I know how to say, “I’m home!”
And of course, “I love you too…”
But I don’t know how to say good bye…
I just can’t say that to you.

Not you.

I don’t know how to say good bye
To all the things you are.
It seems like you’ll be coming home.
It seems like you’re not far.

Your photo smiles at me now
From just across the room.
I don’t know how to say good bye
Without a sense of doom.

I moved around some furniture
To try to fill the space
That’s here now that you’re gone,
But it won’t replace your face.

Your chair is my companion;
It holds me like a friend.
I don’t know how to say good bye
To what didn’t have to end.

I don’t know how to say good bye
To seven happy years.
I don’t know how to force myself
To hold back all my tears.

I know how to say, “Good morning,”
And I know how to say, “Good night.”
I know how to say, “I love you,”
Because they all seem right.

The house feels very empty,
But not as empty as my heart.
The nights are much too long
And the days don’t ever start.

I know how to say, “I’m home!”
And of course, “I love you too…”
But I don’t know how to say good bye…
I just can’t say that to you.

Not you.

Maybe it won’t ever feel
Like something I can say.
For now, I’ll say what’s in my heart
And that will be okay.

Good night, my love, good night.
Good night, my missing friend.
I don’t know how to say good bye…
So...until we meet again.


9 comments:

  1. Wow. That's all I can say. This brought tears to my eyes. You say it's not your best but I read it and see honesty, love, loss and pain. Your words are beautiful. Sending love and hugs.

    ReplyDelete
  2. No apology is necessary Arielle. This poem is beautiful and heartfelt.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love the poem, you did a great job! and it definitely tugged on my heart strings because I cant seem to say goodbye to Joey or part with any of his clothes either. Hang in there Arielle you're doing amazing even if it doesn't seem like it to you. Xoxo <3

    ReplyDelete
  4. Very beautiful, perfect p, and heartbreaking

    ReplyDelete
  5. Dear Arielle the poem is beautiful so is the the lovely picture of you and Rick.You dont have to hold back the tears express what is in your heart.Keep whatever you feel you need to have around you for it is only you who knows how you feel and how to work through your feelings.Thankyou for being you and sharing your strength and love with us. sending love and hugs xxxx Ann richardson

    ReplyDelete
  6. Dear Arielle,
    when these kind of things happen, it’s really hard to find something to say. Words seem useless, because they don’t change the reality. Words don’t adjust things. Yet they are all that's left.
    I don’t have the presumption to tell you that I understand how you feel, because I think that to truly understand one thing, you need to have tried it on your own skin. But I think I can say that, in spite of everything, I understand you, because I lost my BFF a little over a year ago, in April 2013. We were always together, he was like a brother to me.
    It's been more than a year, somehow I went on, but if I think about him, it seems to me not a single day has gone. If someone asks me about him, and I'm lost in my thoughts, I talk about him using the “present simple”, as if nothing had happened, as if April 2013 had never existed.
    I went ahead because I had to do it, and when you must go ahead, at some point, all the wound of your heart, whose are still open and bleed, freeze. It 's the way to recover and to defend your heart from other harm that can be done, perhaps to regenerate. Having a frozen heart has advantages: first of all, the fact that, failing to prove anything, you avoid suffering. Heart is a strange organ... it’s actually an organ of coverage, because what we call “the heart” probably is the head, and in any case they are connected, just like ears, nose and throat... the pain we feel doesn’t go away, it crouches in a corner and stays there, still alive. For most of the time, it’s sleeping, but then it happens that it awakens. And when it wakes up, the pain is always the same. There aren’t wounds of the heart that goes away. They form a band-aid on, but it's so subtle that it takes very little so that the wound will be reopened and restart bleeding. When the heart is frozen this doesn’t happen. Everything is silent, for better or for worse. Neither joy nor sorrow. A strange balance that, at the same time, makes you neither feel good nor feel bad.
    Well, I have been so for a long time: nothing more than a frozen heart. I was like a wounded animal, who takes refuge in its den and remains there to lick its wounds waiting to see what will happen then, if it survives or not. My wounds are not healed even after 15 months, and I think there are things that never heal, scars of the soul… but I'm moving forward. And I realized that being locked in the den didn’t shelter me from the pain anyway. So, day after day, I try to put my head back out ... to see if, somehow, somewhere, there is still a ray of sunshine.
    I know it's early, I know it's damn hard but, simply, that's what I invite you to do: to search for that ray of sunshine peeping through the black clouds that fill your sky right now.
    Don’t think about the time that you are not allowed to spend with Rick, think of how much beauty there was in the years you spent with him, that you were lucky enough to share with him. Think of the good times that you have lived together, don’t think about what you can’t live ever. Just try to think of all your good times, think about when you have been happy together, remember what there was of infinitely beautiful in your relationship with Rick. Think about the good things you did together when you were engaged, and living without knowing it, without knowing anything yet, when everything was perfect and that was fine.
    That's what I try to do, when I think back to my BFF.
    So try to think of Rick's smile, and be happy for all it has been... whatever it was, so small, so immense. Maybe this would give to the rough time you’re living, despite everything, a sense. Your sense.
    And, Arielle, one last thing: smile. Show the world a real smile, not the one that you can force only on your lips, but the one that lights up your eyes because it comes from your heart. I think it would be fair. No more eyes full of tears, no more handkerchiefs.
    Because I’m sure that Rick was too much life to become tears.

    [I’m sorry for my bad English, but I’m Italian.]

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thank you for sharing this amazing and deeply personal poem with us.

    ReplyDelete

Help me feel less alone.