Saudade

“People have beautiful things to say about you, 

but you must die first.”

People write poems about you when you’re gone,

but ignore your story while you’re here. 

The value of a presence is often defined by 

the void it leaves behind. 

And suddenly, you are more than ever before.

Every missed call returned in regret,

Every silence starts speaking in a language

no one bothered to translate. 

Maybe you’ll finally be given flowers

you wish were from that boy.

Petals pressed into hands that can’t feel them,

apologies and compliments resting on a chest

that no longer rises.

Why can’t we be brave and say it now?

Why do we swallow the words?

Carry them like stones in our mouths

until they turn into eulogies?

I wonder

how many things we’ll only understand later,

how many people will become

more important in memory

than we allowed them to be in real life.

Temporary, yes.

The weight of this life is crushing,

for there is only one of itself.

Realize the way things are already leaving

even as we hold them.

Hold someone’s presence

without needing their absence

to prove its weight.

I don’t want to be remembered,

better than I lived.

So don’t wait for the quiet

to make me meaningful.

Don’t wait for loss

to teach you how to love me.

Say it now,

While we are sitting next to each other,

before summer scatters us.

while it can still reach the living organism

that was intended to hear it.

Why give me flowers,

when I can no longer smell them?