when i’m gone

When I’m gone
This photo will slide gently
From your wallet to the floor

I hope you
Feel the sun behind my head
To touch the smile on my lips
That in your absence whispered
To the pen and cried to the paper
That fell from the tree of you and me

Resting Laurels

thoughts
i remember when my grandma was in her eighties and preparing to attend her seventh funeral one year. she was stoic while explaining it was the last friend she’d had left, and of course i didn’t understand so nodded to let her know i’d heard what she’d said. her words were like trail mix that i’d fill my heart with but not ingest for decades. i’m not stoic, so when i am, it’s just a mask. my heart feels heavy at the number of folks still dying, falling away, or otherwise disappearing. it’s not always hard, really it’s not, but today, because they all seemed to leave in the middle of a sentence that severed my connection with humanity, it is. so i imagine leaving in the middle of a sentence, but leaving behind a photo to say what may be left wondered. it couldn’t just be “i love you,” cause that’s an incomplete sentence too.