Fragments of You

Your number’s still in my phone

Though I can never call

A million things to tell you

And you can’t answer at all

 

I see you in the mirror

A bit more every day

Still trying to make you proud

Though you’ve gone away

 

When I go home now

It mostly looks the same

But it feels more like a tomb

As memories echo all the pain

 

You’ve been gone so long now

Though it feels like yesterday

Still learning to say goodbye

And still don’t know what to say

 

I passed the place you died today

And it scattered me like a grenade

Fragments of grief like shrapnel

That was left inside my brain

 

Sometimes I forget simple things

Or memories of the past

Yet the day you went is frozen

Every second to the last

 

I see you in a way

That you would surely hate

Lying cold in a hospital bed

That terrible final day

 

And so here I seek to remember

The way you were before

In your computer chair smiling

When the kids opened up the door

 

Jumping off rocks into a creek

Like you were still a teen

Generations jumped together

You, me and my son between

 

A brightly lit tree at Christmas

You digging presents out below

As excited as your grandchildren

Eyes filled with joyful glow

 

After swimming in the pool

Drip drying in the chair

Talking on the back porch

I still can feel you there

 

I remember our living room

Dappled in beams of sun

Listening to Dean and Robbins

Big Bad John and Running Gun

 

And if I listen closely

To those old country songs

I can almost hear you there

As you still sing along

 

You are not truly gone

As you live on in my heart

I’ll hold close the good things

And we will never be apart

 

Still I can’t help feeling sorrow

I see your picture and am sad

My goodness how I miss you

I’ll always love you Dad