You're Gone

So way back in high school, I took a creative writing class. We had to write a poem about our bedrooms using something green, something dead and a female relative walking in.

The door creaks open and she walks in.

Petite. Blonde. Pretty. She is all these and more.

She looks around the darkened room,

Her eyes lingering on the fuzzy green chairs,

The shelf full of movies,

The unkempt bed,

The abandoned books.

A tear rolls down her cheek,

Glistening in the dark like a diamond.

Her diamonds that she shed

That day it happened

And the days that followed.

But then came the days the diamonds stopped falling.

This day that the diamonds

Start to fall again.

It wasn’t your fault,

She whispers as she wipes the diamonds away.

It wasn’t your fault; the roads were icy, the weather fierce.

She looks around the darkened room,

Her diamond-filled eyes lingering, seeing without seeing,

The ghost of an echo of a memory long since passed.

I see you, you know, in here and out there.

You’re sitting with a Mt. Dew and a pretzel bun,

She says to the fuzzy green chairs.

You’re laughing at some stupid movie,

She says to the shelf full of movies.

You’re sprawled beneath the mound of blankets,

She says to the unkempt bed.

You’re forever rearranging those titles,

She says to the abandoned books.

You’re still here, forever,

In the things you left behind.

But while you’re still here,

You’re also not here nor there nor really anywhere;

No, she whispers, not anywhere.

You’re not sitting with a Mt. Dew and a pretzel bun,

She says to those fuzzy green chairs.

You’re not laughing at some stupid movie,

She says to that shelf full of movies.

You’re not sprawled beneath the mound of blankets,

She says to that empty and unkempt bed.

You’re not rearranging those titles,

She says to those abandoned books.

You’re gone.