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His soul he had borne but to hopeless avail
For the damage was done with all the times she had failed.
For the years she put forth her heart openly
There was nothing returned but his dark misery,
And through it all she had tried so hard to be strong
But her struggles she could only endure so long.
Perhaps not the words that he wanted to hear
As he'd grown to discover what had now disappeared--
His love had revealed him as never before
And he sat before her pleading; one chance more
And perhaps not the words he expected she'd say
As she looked at him softly before turning away:
"You left me alone as I watched from my world,
Nursing and raising our boys and our girl.
"As rivers of tears I shed night after night,
You never stopped once to see my fierce fight,
"To help me to love you--to know you loved me,
To find the child in you and set your dreams free,
"To have and to hold until death did us part,
But alas, you have killed my once passionate heart.
"'Tis not for a lack of my love I must go,
but because I cannot love a man I don't know."
And she turned away softly from the man who just died,
And for the man she had longed for, she silently cried.
For all that was in her was now deep within,
In a darkness so dence as to let never a light in
And to herself she was true, and she turned to leave
To find somehow, some way, another something to believe.
The poem A Tender Goodbye is Copyright 1998 by Paige C. Storme.
The collection of works called Fish Eggs For The Soul is Copyright 1998 by Brian Rickman.
Copy edited by Sara Fawbush, editor of The Young Writer's Collection.