Poem

It is strange to think that when you came into my office with Christmas wishes,
that would be the last time I spoke with you.
That you could be a bride in September and gone before the year ended
and that when I sent you a stupid new years message you had already died,
the fates ignoring that you were so full of life.

When we went home for Christmas we did not expect that the next time we met
would be in shocked silence around a table, or talking about practicalities
while we tried to make sense of senselessness, not knowing what to say
because it felt like some kind of a terrible sick joke
that you would not be coming back to us.

I never imagined that I would spend a morning making phone calls
to tell your friends and colleagues that you were dead,
because you were young and beautiful and making beginnings.
Nothing about this is even close to being right,
I cannot believe that you have died.

With the stupidity of senseless morbid thoughts I keep thinking of
how you made me laugh, complaining about the cold Irish weather,
I told you to just wait until January, that it would get worse before it got better,
how stupid a thing to say, with the benefit of hindsight, all things considered
and how now you will be so cold forever.

I am waiting, like a child, for someone to come and tell me there was a mistake
for you to arrive, laughing, and say that they got it wrong.
You cannot be forever lost to us, to be forgotten, dead and gone.
It is it not fair, that you could be ended so bluntly, inconsiderately,
when you were so vibrant, so alive, so young.

I will miss you joking with me, you smiling and loud and demanding,
you vibrant, you living and talking in giddy accented rapidity.
I wish, for what wishing is worth, that you were not lost and us bereft,
but still dreaming your dreams, still loving your loves,
with a young woman’s ignorance of the time she has left.