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will you say when I'm gone

Our prompt for this day was a song, Each Coming Night, from the album Our Endless Numbered Days, by Iron & Wine. One suggestion for writing was to take the existing structure of the lyrics as poetry and ‘weave in your own people and phrases.’ This is the approach I chose. So for the first four stanzas, the first lines are exactly the same as in the song. The rest of it is original.

Will you say when I'm gone away 
"My son was here but he couldn't stay." 
The world was not enough to hold you. 
You escaped its grasp and left me 
gasping on the ground as you ascended.

Will you say to them when I'm gone 
"Your grandson's understanding 
was both beyond his years 
and not at all 
and would not reconcile 
did not compute 
could not go on."

Will you say when I'm gone away 
"Your brother was out of sync with time." 
He didn't see 
how who he was 
belonged here. 
He didn't know — as you, my surviving child, know — 
he and the world 
would grow 
and that he'd see the light of day.

Will you say to me when I'm gone 
"You live on." 
In the games you played 
and those you created 
in the things you loved to do 
and the people who love you.

Not you, though, living — 
but a shadow, an outline 
a fading sketch, an echo.

What will I say? 
You are gone too soon 
a death "out of order" 
that shuts everything down.

I've walked through the wrong door 
nothing looks the way it should 
this is not my life 
this is not my life 
this is not my life.

Saturday 11.24.18
Posted by Susan Ward
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