December

When the darkest days come we come together,

We may never know why happiness sets us apart but,

tragedy stretches out a hand and lips to kiss it better.

---

And we were born on either end of the darkest week.

But our tragedy was that those seven days and seven years

separated us in ways that tragedy and tears could not kiss away.

And I never asked you to stay.

---

I never asked you to be the hero I believed you could be

But when I suffered as you had suffered you did not even know

that I was screaming your name.

---

I turned to salt as Odysseus turned from my cunning hero

to a fool to shame,

Curling in on himself like a fern in winter,

Curiosity killed me and all the same

you still like cats better.

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I waited like a Beckett play,

sometimes forgetting why I was there

Memories as muddled as your badly dyed hair,

trying to remember why I thought you’d be there

Other then we were both born in December

and darkness brings people together.

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So we suffered separately

no rising to the occasion heartwarmingly

You are beginning to uncurl

And I’ve grown into these boots you passed on,

they hold me up, could keep you up,

It hasn’t been too long but oceans and years and silence between us

Unfurling to move on

Oh brother, remember, we were born in December

and darkness brings us together.