By Renee Collins
These are the things I know:
The pain of feeling too damaged to serve as anything but comic relief.
The fear one’s life will slowly erode into something so small, it will suffocate.
After you arrived, I could speak my own language and be understood.
All I have to do is look at you, and I smile.
Sometimes you are frustrated, bored, sullen: and when I look at you, I still smile.
I see you walking to the office, hands shoved in pockets, head down
I stop and watch you, dumbfounded with the simple pleasure of it -- smiling.
These are the things I know:
The pain of feeling too damaged to serve as anything but comic relief.
The fear one’s life will slowly erode into something so small, it will suffocate.
After you arrived, I could speak my own language and be understood.
All I have to do is look at you, and I smile.
Sometimes you are frustrated, bored, sullen: and when I look at you, I still smile.
I see you walking to the office, hands shoved in pockets, head down
I stop and watch you, dumbfounded with the simple pleasure of it -- smiling.
I love the sudden, barking sound of your laugh and how it rattles through the air,
slapping me awake just before I forget I am alive.
When the sound of your voice or the shuffle-stomp of your feet announce you -
firecracker mind exploding in all directions, setting things ablaze around you –
I am happy.
When you smile - which you do with your whole self, beaming
All broken or suffocated feelings leave me.
Someday soon you will leave.
This is absolutely right and proper.
When you do, this place will be so quiet and still.
I might go days without remembering I am human,
made for things besides duty.
When you do, I will fall even further to the margin of your life, perhaps
even slide off completely.
This, too, may be right and proper.
And my life will grow so quiet and still,
I might not even notice it shrinking.
This is what I don’t know:
How will I bear it?
slapping me awake just before I forget I am alive.
When the sound of your voice or the shuffle-stomp of your feet announce you -
firecracker mind exploding in all directions, setting things ablaze around you –
I am happy.
When you smile - which you do with your whole self, beaming
All broken or suffocated feelings leave me.
Someday soon you will leave.
This is absolutely right and proper.
When you do, this place will be so quiet and still.
I might go days without remembering I am human,
made for things besides duty.
When you do, I will fall even further to the margin of your life, perhaps
even slide off completely.
This, too, may be right and proper.
And my life will grow so quiet and still,
I might not even notice it shrinking.
This is what I don’t know:
How will I bear it?
