Who were you? I’d like to know.
Who were you really?
You weren’t the old woman that lived upstairs,
Shut off in a world of smoke, cheap lotion, and daytime television.
You weren’t an example I should have set for myself, one that would
Guide me away from that which brought you down.
Tubes, life-giving tubes, transporting life to lungs and probably a heart
Already dead.
Who were you?
Who am I?
I wanted to know more.
About you.
About the life you lived.
Actually lived.
The secret life.
Not one told to me by others that supposedly knew you;
Not the one black ink stamped into and absorbed by cheap newsprint;
Expected, and forgotten.
No, that wasn’t your life. That was your death.
I already know about that.
The closest I got to an understanding was the painful squint of your eyes
When I accidently pulled your hair.
When I sat down to say that I loved you,
When what I really meant was goodbye.
Love, though it is loudly proclaimed throughout the world as the one thing that ties us
Together;
The one thing that perseveres;
The one thing that it is beyond selfish;
It is also a thing that is entirely projected by us,
By our humanity.
Us, with our individual minds, and organs, and passions…
Where is the real connection?
What defines that which has no previous definition to compare it to?
To be abstracted by;
To be discerned from.
Who has ever truly been without?
I don’t have the answer.
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