Timeless

In the LIVE workshop this week for River of Words (Beth Kempton‘s inspiring writing programme) we took on a “final line” challenge: write a last line that will leave your reader pondering yet satisfied.

The prompt: “Watching you, standing there, I thought…”.

I scribbled an end line, shaped it (twice) and shared out loud with a hint that something that had gone before it, though that was far from finished. So I revisited it later and this is what happened.

It isn’t deep and dark personal stuff, although it does relate to the inevitability of death and those left behind. I’ll likely die before Monika and then who will she call when the email won’t send or the drain is blocked? (Of course, I know she will manage such mundanities perfectly well—we do, somehow, don’t we?—yet there will be missing and mourning and occasional bouts of misery.) I have left her all my worldly goods (a couple of Macs and a lot of books) but the rest are memories.

And I wonder if, when we die, we die all at once? I bet some of our cells keep going for a while. And the gut biome - that will simply repurpose itself. What of consciousness? How fast does that give up the ghost, so to speak?

Anyway, that’s the back story.

Here’s the completed poem. (And a video with me reading it out loud.)

Timeless

Watching you
standing there
I thought
I saw you weeping

Our last time
together
I thought
as in time I faded

You didn’t see me
at the time
you thought
I’d already gone

For you
this time was not
our last time
together

For you
this was
your first time
without me

You stood there
not watching
on your own
for a long time

Watching you
for the last time
standing there
for your first time
all alone

I’m thinking this time
I might weep too
not for me
now with no time

but instead
just for you