Poetry Corner

‘Still here

Poets name withheld by request

Driving past houses once familiar to me,

Some are painted now.  Children in the yard. Toys scattered about. 

 Homes of friends, full of memories, don’t ya see,

They’re gone now… but I’ m still here.

I look up an address in my dog- eared book, pages loose and akimbo.

 ‘Seems like on every page are the names of loved ones,

crossed out but not erased,

in my memory that is,

  they’re gone, but I ‘m still here. 

A new book, start fresh, perhaps?

Should I put the crossed- out ones back in,

  as if they were still here?

‘Too painful not to mention them.

  My bestie Theodora or Terri, as she has always been known,

  We talked every day for seventy years,

  in person when she lived near,

  over the phone when she didn’t.

We don’t talk much now.

  I ‘m a stranger who just happens to call.

  If she picks up at all. 

 Confusion, then agitation and fear come over the line.

In moments of clarity,

  I hear emptiness and yes, despair.

We both want it to be like it was,

  like it always has been.

  Wanting to remember us back then,

Not now, no, not now.

  It’s so lonely talking with her,

on both ends of the line.

 I ‘m still here, but not to her you see.

She‘s still here, but not to me.