You died.

I could not say it,
I could not write it;
I told them, ‘She’s gone!’

Then I said, ‘She left us’,
But that made it your fault.

So I settled for ‘She’s now at peace’.

I looked for a suitable heading –
I said ‘The farewell of …’
It did not sound formal enough.
I wrote ‘The departure of …’
But that was too vague.

So I settled for ‘The promotion to glory of .. ’

I needed to do the roll-call too;
I wanted to leave your name on the list,
I wrote in brackets (absent with apologies) –
Perhaps that was sincere,
But you were not coming back …

So I settled for ‘Not with us anymore’.

When I had run out of forms to phrase it in,
I found myself erasing your name,

Letter by letter,

As though it were never there in the first place.

I scrolled back to the title- ‘The death of …’

It was time to face it.