This painting – already published – was meant for the poetry that I was still writing.

I go to bed and it’s another night without you

I wake up and it’s another daybreak without you

Our cats hang around and stare at me

perching over the furnitures and the sink.

Outside the window, through the foggy and dusty glass

the thyme smiles and the basil greets too.

Tiredly I make some coffee,

there’s plenty of coffee in our pot now

and I don’t have to fill it up so often

not like we had to do before,

‘cause it’s another breakfast without you.

I sit, within a sunbeam in the kitchen

and it’s another sunny morning without you.

I wander through my day’s hours

working in all the empty rooms still filled of you.

But it’s just another daybreak without you.

I long to sit and talk with you

hanging lazily out on the balcony

and holding hands in the sunny afternoon.

But the sun rays miss you

and the weak breeze can’t caress your face.

I still walk sometimes downtown,

over the narrow streets

like when I walked with you

or in the park, like we used to.

But now the streets are lonely

and the park is misty too.

I know I shouldn’t let myself be down

‘cause if I were where you are now

and you were where I’m still here

I wouldn’t like you to be down or suffer

for not having me around.

I’d like to drive you to the autumn sea,

lay down with you on the sunset’s shining sand

and lightly touch your briny lips,

but now I can only linger in my lonely thoughts

for all the things you would have loved to do

and I hoped too, I could have done again with you.

Will there be other sad daybreaks without you?

Other downcast days and lonely nights without you?

There may be still many sad daybreaks

and lonely nights for me ahead

but none of them will ever be without you

and your beautiful smile I’ll always have and see 

shining around and all inside of me.

 

Dedicated to the one I love,  Margaret Mary Healy,  September 2017