Nothing Poetic / I'll See You All Tomorrow

~~~Written to my classmates this year

The saddest part of change

Is that its inevitable,

Change is what makes everything finite, 

What makes everything susceptible to disappearing

At any given moment.

Change is the saddest part of life.

In a handful of months 

We all were plunged into an icy surf

Filled with strangers.

And somehow, we all found our way. 

I can see it in your eyes,

Some of you are ready to move on

To the next novel in our lives,

But some of you are afraid to move on

To the next paragraph.

You're like me,

Hanging on to every word,

Drawing it out so you can make this last,

Because there's nothing poetic about a goodbye.

And you know,

Some people say that words are beautiful,

That mine are strung together well enough to make it count

But all I feel as I look at blank paper

Is overwhelming rage, underwhelming passion

Because I write and I write and I write

But there have never been enough words

To describe how I feel.

If I could create a language

Where every action was its own word

Then I would write us foolish children

Masquerading as even more foolish adults

I would write us sliding through our awkward phases

Like penguins on ice,

I'd write a sincere goodbye

That could fill every abnormal arc,

Every slimy curve,

Every light angle 

That we have slipped through together this year.

If I could write a goodbye

I don't think even then it could illustrate

All that we've gone through together. 

Because words cannot explain everything

And there have always only been so many words,

With one word pretending to be as sacred as the action,

Though the action can never be satisfied by that word.

Still though,

Thank you,

For your time with me.

So in this last goodbye

Let me convey to all of you

That this poem can never mean goodbye. 

Let's let this mean

That we promise to remember

All that we've gone through together.

Let's let this poem mean

That we promise to grow up

Into good, respectable people.

Lets let this testament mean

Until we meet again. 

Let's not let goodbye mean this is the end.

Because there's nothing poetic about a goodbye.

Reviews

[Porter]

You say there is nothing poetic about a goodbye yet this piece of writing ironically contradicts that. I'm sure, in your infinite wisdom, you did that on purpose. Without really saying goodbye here, I felt like you were coming to a goodbye at the end of the poem, but more or less released everyone from your mind in the form of a promise to go out and do great things, while at the same time hiding the fact that the probability of you seeing most of these people again is quite low. I do not know whether you hid that on purpose. Maybe you just decided to keep it a hope, a high one at that, to see them all again. You have conveyed the "until we meet again" very touchingly in this. I even choked up a little bit. I think the saddest part about saying until we meet again is that one is creating the illusion that there will be a time, when you all subconsciously know that's probably not the case. But we hope. And the best thing we can do for those whom we shared a community with is to remember, and keep them in our memories. Excellent job on this. ~Never Forget

[Tai Ryens]

Extraordinary expression about the woes of goodbye, the fears and acknowledgement of the future. From any angle you capture the anxiousness of life as it snaps and goes on while we follow it, begging at it to snap at us once more from where whence we came from, and the only way to get life to respond is to step afront the frightening, dangerous jaws of life and plunge ourselves into it. I find this very intriguing, more so that I note that I stand au contraire and note my disputing beliefs and overall standpoint.

You seem to be rather frightened about the future, whereas I find myself wishing desperately and solely for the seconds on the clock to go by ever-so quicker. I find farewells to be one of the most beautiful sentiments ever to be stated, expressions of goodwill and contentness and mantras of "I'll miss you!"s being uttered aloud.

We stand by a similar belief, however, that words could never express the daily churning of our thoughts as they rile wildly within our heads. Well done, as always, Riley. Keep it up.