Linking with What's Going On? for this week's prompt "August"
Thank you Mary, Sumana, Sherry & Susan for all you do!
Come join us!
There is no timetable for grieving —
Grief is a snail
It's a shooting star
A walk around the lake
It's eternity
Or frost 'til bloom —
Memories coursing through the heart
It lasts as many heartbeats as it takes;
sometimes all of them.
~Terri Guillemets
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My heart is a train,
and it passes through the town of your last days
over and over again.
True destination August
first day of school,
1972
at a hospital now abandoned.
The time and place are etched on a ticket to board,
and I take a window seat watching things pass by.
I am 61 now
having traveled 52 years since that day.
The view still has the same solemn news,
the shock and the suddenness
like a train stopping in its tracks.
I can still feel the jolt of it,
hearing those unexpected words.
More things were abandoned that day, than a hospital.
Loss is more than death certificates in file cabinets, and
witnessing a last breath.
It is days that bleed into years with something greater
missing.
I hold this ticket, it heads to all the places we will never
go together,
and unspoken words I shall never hear.
A birth, marriages, divorce, and graduations all hold an
empty chair,
the one next to mine by the window seat
the place where August lives forever.
For my heart is a train, and it passes through the town of
your last days
over and over again.