If The Worst Should Happen

If The Worst Should Happen

My dreams are where you still touch me.
I feel your arms about my waist,
Your lips on mine.
My dreams are where I forget that
You are gone from me;
That I now live in a world
Where you are nothing but a name on a screen,
The lyrics of a song,
A face in a photograph.

I dream of possibility -
Of other universes where life worked out different.
Where we were different people
Who made different choices -
The right choices.
Where time wasn't wasted and I told you that I loved you
Every time I meant the words.
Where I realised what I had before it was gone,
Stopped wasting time.

We wasted so much time, my love.
In my dreams everything is different
And yet somehow nothing is at all.
We are still us.
Still you and me in that old cabin trying to find eternity.
But instead of the undying yet tortured, broken road
Our love led us down,
I stay and you wait
And we are happy.

And it saddens me because that life I dreamed,
Reality may have played out differently
Because we chose wrong,
We made mistakes and hurt each other,
But where we ended up?
That's sitll the same.
Still you and me and our girls,
Us showing them what the truest of loves looks like.
What it means for love to conquere all.

So, baby,
You might be gone from this life,
I may be left with nothing but old records,
Interviews, photographs,
Pages and pages and pages of unfinished lyrics
And the faded sent of you staining my dreams,
But I see you in the first rays of sun
After a storm,
In the fabric of this town you loved.

I feel you in that cabin that saw us through it all,
On that bridge, in that cafe, on that stage.
Everywhere.
All at once.
Your legacy resides in lyrics, two beautiful girls
And our love.
So I will keep my promises,
Too many were broken over the years and I will not -
Cannot - let you down now.

I told you once that I knew how to love you now -
That doesn't change because you're gone.
I will make sense of your thousnads
Of pages of lyrics,
Raise those girls the way you wanted them to be raised
Finish the things that you started,
And I will go on loving you
Until the last breath leaves my body
And we see each other again.

© 2017 Eala Cartwright

Author's Note

So unlike normal for me, this is not a personal poem, it was actually inspired by the recent death of a certain character on CMT's Nashville. So my dedication is to that show and the wonderful actors and creators, as well as to all those who are living every day loving someone that no longer lives on earth