Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you.

Sometimes the most profound feelings can be expressed in the simplest words. I love how this poem so poignantly compresses the pain and yearning after the loss of a beloved into tangible details of memory and desire. Even years later–and the world has changed in so many ways since–oh, how we ache for the presence of our loved one, and for the small pleasures, the little things of earth, quotidian and wondrous, we’d like to share again. Come as you are…even if you’re just a skeleton. I miss you. I miss you. (Yes, I recognize this feeling, and don’t we all?)

Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you. (by Gabrielle Calvocoressi)

Do not care if  you just arrive in your skeleton.

Would love to take a walk with you. Miss you.

Would love to make you shrimp saganaki.

Like you used to make me when you were alive.

Love to feed you. Sit over steaming

bowls of pilaf. Little roasted tomatoes

covered in pepper and nutmeg. Miss you.

Would love to walk to the post office with you.

Bring the ghost dog. We’ll walk past the waterfall

and you can tell me about the after.

Wish you. Wish you would come back for a while.

Don’t even need to bring your skin sack. I’ll know

you. I know you will know me even though. I’m

bigger now. Grayer. I’ll show you my garden.

I’d like to hop in the leaf pile you raked but if you

want to jump in? I’ll rake it for you. Miss you

standing looking out at the river with your rake

in your hand. Miss you in your puffy blue jacket.

They’re hip now. I can bring you a new one

if you’ll only come by. Know I told you

it was okay to go. Know I told you

it was okay to leave me. Why’d you believe me?

You always believed me. Wish you would

come back so we could talk about truth.

Miss you. Wish you would walk through my

door. Stare out from the mirror. Come through

the pipes.