The Longest, Long Good-Bye by Cheri Raley Phillips
It's the longest, long good-bye.
When you're not here, I'm in no place.
There's no recognition in your eye,
Reflections are lost in moments and space.
Lifes' celebrations have gone awry,
Ideas; only fragil webs of aged Belgium lace.
All our dreams slowly crumble and die.
This cruel joke has no class or taste.
My ocean of tears are loathed to dry.
You mind is trapped in a time machine.
I trill in laughter as you briefly remember
As slivers of nostalgia become pristine.
You fondly recall our warm December,
Then your mind slips back into quarantine.
A cognition once so brilliantly limber,
Now dull, as if fed opiates of Morphine.
Incureable hope, I fear, is a crushed ember.
You're neither here, nor there, nor in between.
When you're not here, I'm in no place.
I long to hear you laugh, if not stir a cry.
I reach for answers, asking myself "Why
Are we burnended with this fall from grace?"
The circle of thougts befuddle and mystify,
Until I realized illness is not a disgrace.
There are things in this world I can't rectify.
You're here, yet vanished without a trace.
It's the longest, long good-bye.