Your Memory

My back faces the mirror
Your initials scream at me
“How could you let go…
When all I wanted was for you to see”

My tears run down my face
As I stare at your design
My heart aches in cold sadness
As I recall each swirl of grace

“Never mar your beautiful skin”
a soft sentence murmured in the dark
I regret now disobeying you
But I love how you’ve left your mark

I thought I’d lost your forever
When your truck crumpled in a heap
I felt my whole bein shatter
When I saw your ruined face.

The smell of preserving chemicals
Come back at the worst time
I see your shattered body behind closed lids
As I hold your picture against my chest
I feel the needles buzz
The pain that I should be feeling
Is just a dull ache in my tattered soul

The remembrance of your funeral
Undoes me once again
Dear Rob puts down the gun
As my body shakes with heart-wrenching sobs.

I see your cool face before mine
In my blurry eyes
I hear your soft-spoken words
Flit into my mind.

“I hope for a long life…
Full of nothing but love, and happiness,
And you, always by my side."

I still my shaking body,
so Rob begins again,
To etch my world upon my back,
The symbol that brings you to me.