The Poem I Read on the Anniversary of My Friend's Death
Three years. The same bench. The same poem.
My friend died three years ago, and every year on the anniversary I go to the park bench where we used to sit and I read the same poem. It is not a good poem, not the kind that wins contests, but it is the poem that says the thing I cannot say.
I read it out loud, the way you read to a person who can hear you, even though I know he cannot. The poem is not for him; it is for me. It is the thing I need to say, the thing that needs to be said, the thing that cannot be unsaid.
The poem is about the way he laughed, the way he told a story, the way he made the world feel like a place that was worth living in. It is about the specific way he held a cigarette, the way he split a sandwich, the way he was the kind of person who made you feel like you were the only person in the world.
I read it on the bench where we used to sit, the same bench, the same park, the same light. The poem is the ritual; the bench is the place; the memory is the thing that keeps the person alive.
I will read it again next year. I will read it every year until I am the one who is being read to. The poem is the proof that he was there, and the proof that I am still here, and the proof that the bench is still the place where two people used to sit and talk and be the same person in two bodies.
By Team Writory, for Writory.
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