A young teen boy sits on the first pew, his hands curled up in his lap, his eyes cast down staring at nothing and everything all at once. He's in the gawky stage, with legs and arms much too long for the rest of him. But he looks so small hunched over, shoulders shaking with grief.
A skinny girl comes and sits beside him. She shifts awkwardly before hovering a hand over his shoulder. He doesn't look at her at first, but waits a few thick moments before glancing up at her. He doesn't recognize her, but he's in a daze--the confusion doesn't even register. To him, all the faces are the same. They've all blurred into one face, the same face that hides waxy and dead in the coffin.
The girl debates on what to say. 'I'm sorry'? 'I'll miss him, too'?
Unlike popular opinion, she's not stupid. She knows nothing like that would comfort him. It wouldn't console him, it wouldn't help. It would echo in his ears, as meaningless as a grocery list.
"He loves you." She finally says. She doesn't know why that comes to mind. But it seems like the right thing to say at the moment.
The boy looks up, his green eyes watery and scared. He opens his mouth to say something, but closes it again with a click. She never finds out what he was going to say, and he never tells her. They'll never speak of this moment again. She doesn't even know if he ever recognized her.
She smiles weakly and grabs his hand, squeezing it.
He turns back to stare at the ground, and she hates that her heart sinks a little. She hates that she hates that the moment is over. She hates that she's jealous that he's not crying over her.
And she hates that she didn't tell him the other half of her sentence, "I love you, too."
YOU ARE READING
BURN (Wattys2015?)
Poetry"Poetry...is thoughts that breathe and words that burn."--Thomas Gray "Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash." --Leonard Cohen Poems on the tough stuff in life. Poems on the crazy good stuff in li...
