But Once

It was so long ago, I hardly know of which I speak.

I only know our friendship was so long and dark and deep,

And in a mere five years, we fit a lifetime’s worth of jokes

And secrets, and acknowledged, that our dreams were not a hoax.

For soon, I would attain my dream, as surely, you would yours,

If dull life did not intervene and steer our ships off course.

And I would always have your ear, as always, you had mine.

Such friendships come but once, I fear.  But once in a lifetime.

As boys and badness, yes, and booze soon turned us girls to teens,

I, forced to go where parents chose—a country in-between–

Instead, our lives in letters flew, arriving in the mail,

Long notebooks, full of grief and gruel, describing each detail.

Perhaps we could have been those writers, aged and dull and gray,

Who share their lives for fifty years, instead of just a day,

But such was not to be.  And now, I scribble, quite alone,

My childhood thoughts forgotten, and, with them, my childhood home.

The day I got that final note, writ in another hand,

I did not question it a bit.  My grief did not grandstand,

But part of me expired that day to join your soul in bliss,

The rest, forlorn, forsaken by our former happiness.

For other poems of grief, read Catastrophe, Victoria and The Problem.