THE GIRL WHO LIVED BEHIND

I wrote this poem in January of 2010. It is about a woman I knew who sadly took her life. She was a kind and wonderful person who was a victim of depression and who will always live in my heart. It is one of the poems that can be found in The Widow’s Cliff and Other Poems which can be found on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kindle and several other places.

The Girl Who Lived Behind

Copyright 2010 by Gordon Kuhn

 

 

The quiet girl who lived behind

most surely, slowly lost her mind

for cursed she was in her mother’s womb

she now sleeps, lays lonely in her tomb

 

Her spirit un-trapped from flesh and bone

by knife’s edge she worked to hone

and laid her down in water warm

her thoughts now resting from their desperate swarm

 

The cut was quick, the blade was swift

and she began in slight pain to drift

and dreamt of days that might have been

were it not her curse from some unknown sin

 

That left her born an unpleasant sight

though she wished with all her might

for one dance at her high school prom

for one date with a boy named Tom

 

The dog she loved had been recent put away

and now she had not any need to stay

So alone she laid within her bath

and as the world slipped she gave a laugh

 

At an empty thought, the joke of life

for which for her had been but strife

she came, years later, stood next to me

two men, not known, spoke that she was now free

 

The shackles, bondage had slipped away

as life had drained she could not stay

but came years later wanting me to know

that she had simply had to go

 

And had wept that faultless night

her eyes burning in clouded sight

and stood before a bathroom mirror

and cursed her life, deaths choice the clearer.

 

The door had closed, I simply had to go

not knowing what to say, the tears did flow

an offer made by she for me to stay

but I had to leave to go my way

 

Disturbed I found her birthright curse

not grown enough myself to nurse

the lost and lonely bare laid feeling there

the hungry haunting sadly painful stare

 

And I in shame did in wild confusion slink away

while she said  welcome, come please stay

stay this night and warm my bed

or else a broken heart shall leave me dead

 

A friend is all I need, nothing else

a friend is all I want, nothing else

Years passed and she sudden came

not to cast any shame or blame

 

Simply to say she’d passed and gone her way

But now her presence comes unexpected this day

Not to haunt and not to play

But just to say she could not stay.                                        01/12/2010

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