Silence is on the tip of my tongue.
I try to find a way
To break it, tear it from my lips
And spit it out
Like something foul tasting.

But, it lingers there
Like a memory you’d rather forget
That you lock in a safe then throw away the key.
Everyone else can feel it too.

It’s contagious,
Apart from a few
Who give weak mumbles every now and then
Of remorse and click their tongues sympathetically.

There are no smiles; smiles would be inappropriate
Out of place, somehow they didn’t belong today
As if they should be shunned, frowned upon.
As if in someway they were a mockery of his memory.

Everything is sad, gloomy and dark
You feel like happiness was something you imagined
That belonged to someone else, someone remote
Not the old you even (last week before the news)
When in your ignorance you had some semblance of joy,
But some strange mythical creature perhaps
To whom happiness was a prize, rare and unattainable
Like the Golden Fleece or eternal life.

And now you feel like you’ve never been happy
And you will never be happy again.
There’s an absence that you can never fill
A void, black and empty
And everything has been sucked into it;
Even tears are hard to come by.

Slowly they carry him in
Laying him in that final resting place.
You can’t look as they do,
Because looking makes it final;
Means he’s never coming back.

You’ll never hear, see, or touch him ever again
And that realization will tear you; hurt you
Like no pain ever has and no pain ever will.
It would destroy you
So you look away, close your eyes
And for a brief moment, feel a hand on your shoulder.

When you look however, there’s nothing there
Just the wind and the rustling of some leaves
And then a hand grabs yours and says
“Lets go home”.