ALICE

All that’s left for me is

a tendril of smoke to

trickle out of your ashes,

your leftover sugar meds,

heart meds, asthma meds

your empty clothes lying flat,

folded and lonely.

Author's Note

Just one of the stab wounds...

Reviews

[Betty Hermelee]

A stab in the back breaks your heart.. then all you have left are the drips and drabs of her life....and the uncertain path forward...the memories of your life together....whether they will fade or remain vibrant...no one can be sure...melancholic, lonely.....
Warmly, B

[Vol]

Betty... I have been a blessed man. In my 75 years, I have lost very few of the people I love... My mom is 96, talking to my brother just down the hall. But the few who are gone occupy great vacancies in my heart.
It is a universal circumstance for all humans who have all their wires properly connected.
Vol

[Betty Hermelee]

You are blessed!!!🌷🌷🌷

[Kelly Scheppers]

Death is an unwelcomed houseguest that never leaves. I suppose each reader will draw something personal from this, as with me, it's my older sister. When she died unexpectedly, I flew home to help my niece with the funeral arrangements and to box up what I could of her clothes and personal items. I slept in her bed for the week I was there, in her room, where you could really hear the December wind whipping around the corner of the house. I didn't want to disturb her things, the manner in which she left them...the clothes "neatly folded and lonely"...as if waiting for her return. The melancholy here is what wounds the heart, Vol. You penned it with brevity, beautifully!

[mabel mae]

and it is in all of those empty corners, shallow fragments of alice's life will show through. you will search for her in every surface, every drop of land. every person will become some version of not her and it is going to hurt. it'll hurt like hell. but in that hurt you will breathe, make peace, and walk on.
this poem reminds me of my late mother and how I still cherish her old things.
this poem reminds me of my love and how I still find his things in our house.
-mabel

[Vol]

Mable Mae,
I see you know exactly and from personal loss how easy it was to write this. I keep a pillowcase on one soft cushion that feels a little like the skin on her thigh to hug in the night.
Vol

[Marie]

A very poignant write embroidered in the saddest words, Vol. I felt exactly the same when my Mam died. All her little bits and pieces, tablets, clothes in the wardrobe all served as sabres to stab my mourning heart. But we have the memories, pure and genuine to bring us comfort. We will always miss them until we are reunited with them again. Thank you for sharing, Vol...

[Vol]

Marie,
A person is never really gone until the last tie someone speaks their name. I think i'm going to make a list, and read it aloud nce a day...
Vol

[Marie]

A person is never gone, dear Vol. They walk beside us until we are with them again. Only the body is gone, the Spirit which was within it lives on eternally...

[Lorry]

It isn't much to account for a life and the memories you made together, is it Vol?
I remember thinking that very thought when my Dad passed and his personal possessions were boxed up for a charity shop and his meds were sent back to the pharmacy to get rid of safely.
My mum decided that I should get his SOS med-alert necklace, which sadly got lost in a house fire a few years back, but my best memory was when we got their aged photos of their youth professionally fixed up and given to her as a remembrance. It was just one more smile for her to go among the funny stories we all told about him during the wake, which think started when I told them all of my last memory of him.
It was in hospital just before he died when he struggling for things to say during a visit piped up that he had tried corn flakes that day for the very first time! I couldn't quite believe it and eventually managed to ask him "and what did you think of them?"
He replied "Well, they were okay... but I didn't fancy that semi skilled milk they served it with!
And semi skilled milk it remains to this day. Every time I see it in store it brings a smile to my face.
😃

[Vol]

Lorry, Man,
Puts a lot off stuff in perspective... all our possessions are nothing more than used items picked up along the way. I wish I'd have known that before three of the lovers that passed through my life died... We should have spent more on good times together, and less on rooms full of worthles s**t.
Vol

[Lorry]

Yeah Vol. It brings to mind a fave album by the streets in my younger days. It was called "everything is borrowed."
We never do own what we think we own, possessions own us, not the other way around.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

Powerful poem and gives me a tinge of sadness...my mother's name was Alice. Alice Irene Brule.
I feel this is how my dad felt when she passed.
This poem reminds me of the poem "Folding Laundry" that I used to teach my lit classes.
j.

[Vol]

Thanks, Jacob... It's a long road to go down,...

[Soren]

So sad and dark it unlike the words in the poem builds its fire as the poem dies. Powerful in its demise. A lovely poem.

[Vol]

Thanks, Soren...
By the way, I had my introduction to Philosophy when I was sixteen and studied Kierkegaard, and I've always liked his name, but you are the only person I've met to have it for their own... Your parent really took a leap!
Vol

[Soren]

Funny that you say that it was not from him that it came but my father who got it from an uncle and it has been in the family for about 600 years.

[Vol]

WHOA!!! Cool!