This isnt actually my writing. This was written for me by my friend Jim soon after my friend Stef passed away.
The Day You Didn’t Wake Up
---Dedicated to Stefanie Blackburn
We first met on the day you didn’t wake up.
A sun-drenched January afternoon,
Cold and beautiful like the one before it.
Living fifty feet from each other,
Never a word was passed
And on the day you didn’t wake up,
We didn’t change that fact.
Bitter smell of frozen youth filled my lungs
In a room where the silence was heartbreaking.
I held your icy cheek in hand
As the 911 operator recited monotone orders,
But she couldn’t see this.
Amber hair flowed motionless pass
A pair of baby blues that never seemed so sad.
On the day you didn’t wake up,
You left to the beat of breaking concrete.
Tears raining down like meteors from three stories above.
Slamming through dark stretcher tracks.
The only luggage loaded into that van,
Was a maroon carry-on in your image.
How do you eulogize someone you only met once?
I couldn’t tell ya but I tried to figure it out.
On my kitchen floor for hours,
Shaking hands scribbled words
On paper that blurred with every line,
That blurred with every letter,
That blurred with every passing moment.
On the day you didn’t wake up
I wrote a poem for you
In the hopes that some how
These words might leap from paper
And transcend comprehension of life and death.
That they rearranged themselves into concentrated light
Reaching places un-thought of by men or women,
Just to say that I may not have known you,
But meet me at the gates
On the day I don’t wake up.
We will talk of that cold and beautiful January afternoon
Where the sun had never been brighter
And when we met for the first time.
