In Your Absence

I can’t quite express
The confusion and the mess
That’s been left
In your absence
Why didn’t you confess
The demons that had you possessed?
Why couldn’t you
Escape the thoughts that had you depressed?
Why was this the only way you could address
The aspects of life that you detest
that had you dispossessed?
Perhaps if you got some of it off your chest
The world wouldn’t be one man less
One man that blessed it with his presence
Now all who knew you are left to digest
News of death’s caress via a self-inflicted process
We can’t protest
We can only attest
To the pain and existential unrest
Of the hole your life has left

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This poem is from the book A Requiem For What Could Have Been: Poetry For The Broken