That Heavy Feeling

Those honey colored summer days
Filled with laughter.

I was so small when you handed me
the whole world with your love.

Wagon rides
And pizza covered faces.

The yard stretched for miles
Or maybe it just seemed like it.
Were you happy then?
Smiling brighter than the sun.
Could you have ever loved yourself as much as I love you?

I’m older now, aged decades in years.
Not so naïve to the way we cover our sorrow with smiles.
No one tells you that part.

People finally talk about what your generation was taught to hide.
Those personalities bigger than the world,
Secretly pained and self hating.
Feeling deeper, but never showing.
‘Always happy’, they called you,
Smiling, never sad. If only.

I never would have guessed it.
Until you confessed it – how deep it grew.
In the things you contemplated
When we kids moved out.

So many more things I could have said, if I’d
mindfully abided my time.
Knowing there was a clock whose alarm would
come sooner.
Never guaranteed the number of years we were
sure we’d get with you.

Hardest is the left behind.
Where the ‘what if’ rings in my ears.
Miles between us when I got that call.

We had plans and holidays.
Hugs and crappie food we shouldn’t eat so much of; family
days headed our way.

Yet, the last time I hugged you had been nearly a year.
A year. I remember hugging you longer that last one,
thinking it could be that last one, but not knowing why
it was that last one. That last one.

Three years later, I mourn the simple deleted voicemails
gone in the universe without you.
Fingers autopilot, pulling up your phone number with no
one on the other side. I don’t delete you from the favorites.
The family videos sitting vacant with the voice that brings me
to tears, waiting for those painful nights.

I’m not so happy now, with those honey colored summer days
behind us.
The picture of you smiling at my pizza covered face
collecting dust under the rays of those duller summer days
ahead of me.