A Poem By Death Itself

Graham Rapier,
Death

Back when I was still alive, I rode a crooked stool, my eyes gone blind. Her paintings give no feeling.

Empty bottles crack smiles, catch the sun in full morendo.

Draped in autumn shades of decaying leaves, a flower-born ash, my little girl sat before me.

In seeps of wonder, she plays with toys, now all but memories to me. I feel like I'm dying.

Flower in hand, my grip’s gone ghost. I let the petals fall, and I flutter like a boney butterfly.

My little girl, in feelings I've forgotten, she picks them up and saves them to live on as impressions in her coloring book. She looks up to me with her child eyes and my heart feels alone in a falling world.

Lonely Ants swirl before her feet forming constellations. She names them all and let's them take her candy.

You can see endless worlds reflected in the eyes of a child, and you'll see none of them are dying.

She looks up to me, lonely, wanting a hug, and then in envy of them runs back to her ants, “Maybe tomorrow” she wishes.

Today I had a conversation with a seagull. Through the spirals of my garden through blurs of butterflies, the seagull spoke of how she lost her spark when she gave it to someone else, and when they weren't around she felt lifeless and almost wished she never met them.

Looking back I now realize the garden was hers. She knows it better than I did, her seeds weave through the soil like stories.

Day and night, light and dark, she felt her flowers. I watched her and I could feel all the feelings I had tried to drown.

I was happy today, sad tomorrow. this is her gift to me. She reminds me of what I had forgotten. Feelings both bleak and bright, hope and heartbreak and in between, I love to feel them.

It's a gift I couldn't return, I just let her grow, she's over me, but when I'm lost, I just look to her drawings and then, as the saying goes, I don't believe in dying,

My ribcage opened like a butterfly, where tears were is just music. She and I lifting little stickmen out of mud, all the games I forgot to play and stories I forgot to tell. Newborn air climbs in kite swirls, in living clouds I almost see the horizon dream up a morning.

I finally fly in my Crayola sky drew by my little flower. I await the day when I get to walk with her one last time, until she lives and dies again.

For more articles by Graham Rapier, click here. To get in touch with this writer, email rapier.graham@surrealtimes.net.

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