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And how was I supposed to know anything, at thirteen?
I thought we'd all live forever then.
You had been the first to see me clearly, paper held to the light
Recognised, my thirteen-year-old eyes for the first time half-closed
Two trembling thighs the shaking corner of a huger universe.
But I didn't know how to save you, and the grief
the grief was coming unstuck and a blurry white raging,
a breaking and a straining and a cracked glass heart,
a whole other world. One without you in it.
I didn't know you could feel so many things
I didn't know you could be so undone by a death
There was so much I didn't know. I was thirteen,
I had no concept of forever.
How we can never catch or still the dancing brat of time
The terrible way we forget, as memories congeal and lose their glamour
And the last moment we always fail to savour, not knowing it is the last.
Until one awful day it all comes down to this:
Standing on a beach under a grey and uncertain sky
feeling a vague sort of sadness but not remembering why.