Standing by Your Grave

I wanted to stay by your grave
and watch over you
and guard you
and keep you company
and tell you that
inside in the darkness
you are not alone,
I wanted to stay
and wait for you,
for the day of your return,
of your rolling the stone
and coming back to life,
smiling, laughing
like you always used to,
as if you haven’t left at all,
as if we only separated for a moment
and in that tiny moment
you were just out with your friends,
or working on one of your paintings,
perhaps that one you painted for me
and you never got to finish.

I am staying by your grave,
and though I know in my heart
that you told me not to,
to go on on my way,
and that my waiting is just absurd,
I know, sister, I know, Sarah
and I can almost hear your voice,
but your voice, you see,
the wind has carried,
and the wind has lost it somewhere,
deep in the woods,
or high in the sky.

So I stand by your grave and wait
and sometimes your voice
dews on my face,
and I wake up to myself crying,
and I wake up to myself
telling you that I love you,
that every bone in my body
has missed you
with such an excruciating
and indescribable pain,
I wake up to myself crying
and holding out my heart
like a candle shivering
in the rain and in the dark
and waiting for you to come back,
to lift the darkness
and come back home.