You on the piano,
the thick snow falls.

You ask me to sing with you
and say I sing so well.
This fills me with pride
and I put all my heart into it,
and I think I can see now,
I really had heart back then.

The dark Haworth hills,
where 15 years later you met with Claire
to see the Bronte's house,
disappear behind the snow.
But we are not watching,
You are teaching me to make slide marks
with a fork in white icing
behind the slipping snowman
on his Christmas cake

There's not much more of this that I can take.

and later the mince pies,
the smell that almost makes me cry,
and the family snowfight

I can't take it,
the welling memories
and the loss.
I lose you all over again,
every time I remember.

I have never been happier
than at that piano
in the cosey kitchen light
of our old windswept home

There were men at the door today,
Promoting Jesus.
I was kind to them,
I was kind to them for you.
I would've preferred to speak directly
to God incarnate,
but they said he was busy saving souls,
and I know you'd agree with that.

Still, I'll never understand his plans.
Not the plans he had for you.


I am always haunted by the
pale light of that godless frosty day
in March
when your family came from across the country
to gather round your bed
and say things like "such pretty flowers"
instead of "please don't leave us yet."

I never felt like you had left us,
I felt like we had abandoned you.

"I'll see you next weekend" I said
And you replied: "Let's not say when. It was lovely to see you."

And those were the last words you ever spoke to me,
You, who made me,
And those were the last words I ever said to you,
and how I hate myself for that now.
oh god it was lovely to see you it was so much more than that but...
it was lovely to have known you,
to come from you,
and it was heartbreaking to see you,
die.

I wish I'd said I love you,
or I'm so so sorry,
or just hugged you.
I wish I'd hugged you more,
through my whole life,
and not been a man,
and proud,
and so controlled.

And still I find it hard to cry.
I'm so sorry,
sorry for being so able to carry on,
for being so upbeat
and so uninvolved in the realities of
real life.
And death.

The last time I saw you,
you were lying cold, in an empty room.
Your jewelry had been removed,
your eyes closed and smile set by doctors.
Matthew says he held your hand,
But I could not touch.
I saw your body,
But you weren't there
and I couldn't work out where you'd gone.

Of course you'd say heaven,
but heaven is such a stretch
for one like me,
and so I'm sorry too
for this.

I would give up everything to go back
and be with you again
beside the piano

I would make sure you knew how much I loved you

I would try to prepare you for the day your skin turned yellow
and the pains came
and in the blink of an eye,
your body failed.

I would rescript my last words to you.
No, I would not even leave that room.

Christmas will be hard in that house. From a pain in your stomach
to a funeral,
in just two months:
this is the span of all my heart cannot bare.
It will be hard without you there,
but we go on.

It's wrong.

I think of you everyday,
I do think of you.
I just wished I'd shown such care when you were here.
They say you never know what you've got until it's gone,
and for a someone like me, so hard and numb,
It's true.

I would never say it as a child,
and I know you tried so hard,
but I'll say it now.
It's the only thing I can say
with any conviction
these days:
I am so, so, sorry.