Removed as a courtesy to The Interpreter's House who have published this poem in Issue 49 February 2012 (on page 42) - please see http://www.interpretershouse.org.uk/
Candlestick Press have requested "Pink" for their short book of verse to read at funerals, due out June 2012.
You live on, little one.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Missing
I missed you by a quarter of an hour.
I should have hurried through my morning shower,
missed eating breakfast in the sleepy sun
or read no emails, or replied to none;
denied the summery procrastination
of that prettier route to my destination.
I miss you from the house when I arrive –
everything silent that was once alive.
The nurses meet me at the stair. Their kind,
practised updating powerblasts my mind.
I miss you from that waxy, sleeplike face.
Your thin hands curl without their living grace –
no mischief – tickling doctors, climbing trees
or treating dollies for your own disease.
It's you with self subtracted. And I wail
till my throat hurts me like a swallowed nail.
I'll miss your heart, the things forever not –
the family, the life you’d yet to plot,
the cure you’ll never find – the future star
that cannot now outshine the one you are.
Requiescat Naomi
31 August 2005 – 15 July 2011
I should have hurried through my morning shower,
missed eating breakfast in the sleepy sun
or read no emails, or replied to none;
denied the summery procrastination
of that prettier route to my destination.
I miss you from the house when I arrive –
everything silent that was once alive.
The nurses meet me at the stair. Their kind,
practised updating powerblasts my mind.
I miss you from that waxy, sleeplike face.
Your thin hands curl without their living grace –
no mischief – tickling doctors, climbing trees
or treating dollies for your own disease.
It's you with self subtracted. And I wail
till my throat hurts me like a swallowed nail.
I'll miss your heart, the things forever not –
the family, the life you’d yet to plot,
the cure you’ll never find – the future star
that cannot now outshine the one you are.
Requiescat Naomi
31 August 2005 – 15 July 2011
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