Raw, untouched, unedited.

It's been a tough few days for me, with news of the death of a good friend.
Makes you really think.

I've been writing, to try to clear my head a bit.

I enjoy poetry, as I feel I don't have to worry about structure too much, only emotion and feel.

Vocabulary

Sadness is a word.
One of many.
Words have incalculable power.
Not an original thought,
But a thought
That I am coming to realise,
Nonetheless.

A word can change you.
Break you.
Put words together and they create powerful things.
Confusion.
Anger.
Hurt.
Fear.
All words.

Vocabulary
Is many words
My sister
Didn't learn many words
I think that
It doesn't matter
Because she still
Understood more than any girl should

'Why?'
Is a simple question,
Commonly asked
Later,
When the tears have stopped
But the hurt still flows
Plentiful, steady,
And hot
Consistency of tar,
A roadwork of hurt.

‘Why?’
My little sister
Didn’t know many words.
I like to think that
Maybe
If she knew more words,
She’d be safer.
Her words were deep.
Simple
Emotion.

She tried to fight back
She tried
and
She tired
She hadn't yet learned
The words
To swallow the hurt.

I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner.
I'm sorry
That I can't tell you them now,
But when you find them,
Hiding in life's secrets,
Keep them.
Cradle them in the night
When you can’t sleep.
Hold on to them tight,
When you don't have my hand.
Learn them well
So that they're the last things you forget.

My little sister is not a word.
She is not a little girl.
I learned to swallow the hurt,
Years ago.
Now I swallow this hurt.

I wish I could've held you
While you cried.
I wish I could've told you,
One last time,
Three words,
That you didn't fully understand yet.

I love you.

* * *

The Shadow Puppeteer

Shadow puppets on the wall
Cast for this play by fingers small
The child nestles in her bed
Sleeping not, rehearses instead

Her curtains open to the sky
The moon peeps in as he rocks by
And hesitates, his movements slow
Hoping perhaps to catch the show

Oh, the tales told by this puppeteer
Of fairies and a magic mirror
She holds a flashlight with one hand
The other's a princess in a far off land.

She keeps his whispers soft and low
Hoping that I don't know
As she recites the genie's line
Or plays a pony with hair so fine.

And then Sleep's curtain softly falls
But in her dreams she still recalls
The fairy tales, the battles won,
Sadly now, her story's done.

* * *

Hereafter

Raw emotion, tears rapidly falling,
I hear voices but only whispers,
My hitching breaths, heart silently calling,
I wonder if she knows we miss her?
Because I can still hear her voice,
Soft and sweet and filled with laughter.
Sniffs, sobs, hopeless noise,
We reach desperately into the hereafter.

What were those magic words again,
The ones that could call her home?
I would have used them there and then,
She wouldn’t have had to leave alone.
Somehow, I can still hear her voice,
Soft and sweet and filled with laughter.
Sniffs, sobs, hopeless noise,
We reach desperately into the hereafter.

My heart is heavy and my head is low,
The world is so heaving without her to tease.
I keep wishing that I might know,
If maybe time will pass, and the burden ease.
Because I can still hear her voice,
Soft and sweet and filled with laughter.
Sniffs, sobs, hopeless noise,
We reach desperately into the hereafter.

I can still see her grinning face,
The way she smirked and the way she smiled.
In here, she will always have her place,
No matter where she is, be it time or miles.