Just Thinking Out Loud: The Absent Friend

In this world there will be many people we do not get a chance to meet. We won't be able to become friends or to share experiences because life ended before we met. Last year as I looked around at the many horrors that faced the world an ache came into my heart. Yes, I felt sorry and sad for the families and friends of those persons who passed on to their next life after death.

While we are here on this earth, each day is an opportunity to meet someone we did not know before. There are many refugees and immigrants who have no choice but to leave their homes and families to find a place to call home. Some will be successful, and others will die trying. Is it so hard to love the person who needs a place to call home? We are absent when we are not there. This is for all the persons who lost their lives through the crimes faced from terrorism, civil unrest, genocide, famine, hate crimes against humanity.


The Absent Friend

I love you my friend,

I did not see or know you

I’m so sure our paths would never cross

and the cross you bear is not your own

For we are lost

As a humanity

I have not paused to say I’m sorry

Or share my condolences

You are gone, your life

A mystery to me

And I do wish that I could find a way

To take that bullet on your behalf

Give you a chance to speak

I want to say, I am so sorry

Now my words mean nothing to you

I am lost, and you have gone

From this place, you once belonged

I have no words to give to your family

As they cry and share their tears,

They have lost all your happy years

So now they grieve,

With a pain I could never understand

You left without a plan

My anger and rage it burns inside

For I have never met you, and my love I cannot hide

I am so sorry, I did not get to see you smile

Or sit next to you in a train, or plane or car

I am so sorry, I will never hear you laugh

You had so much to share so much to say

Forgive me, Forgive me,

I live,

Forgive me, I would gladly give you hope

In this crazy senseless world

Cause it’s all I have to offer at this time

It’s now not enough

You are now an absent friend of mine

This is a song, and a story from my heart

I did not see the bomb, and nor did you

The time it came, when the guns waged its own war

With a militant at your door

Taking your freedom

Now I don’t know, how to say

I’m so sorry; I grieve in my own way

Because you are gone

But my absent friend in my heart, you do live on

I am stopping for a moment to say I love you

And someone else loved you too

I’m stopping, and pausing to give your life

A chance, for someone to grieve, because you meant more

Than a memory

Than a word

You are the stories never told

You are somewhere that we go

When we are gone

I love you, forever

You shared my life because you were born.

Peace!

Poem first published in July 2016...

Closer to Home

My world was rocked a bit last week with a double murder in my neighborhood. I knew the young men killed  through casual interaction, and because I was a customer of their car wash services. They died because someone decided they should not live. They were not in gangs, nor were they involved in any illegal activity. A young businessman  and an employee. It's alleged that the business owner refused to pay a 'protection tax to criminals'. Whatever the reason, I saw those guys getting up early and opening the business place. Twenty-two and twenty-seven. I will write more about it, maybe. For now, I'm reflecting and just needed to say , we never know what our own story will be, or that of our own children and family / friends. 


Crime is universal. Hate is universal. Love is universal. Humanity is who we are. We are a part of the human race.   

Thank you for reading, sharing and understanding!

© Donna-Luisa Eversley and D-WORDSLAYER, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Donna-Luisa Eversley and D-WORDSLAYER with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.