GRIEF Poem: Well, by Amelia K. Hollow.

The last day he felt like himself,
he asked me to get coffee.
Just the two of us.

I chose a boy
whose name
still burns like static
at the back of my throat.

While he sat in a coffee shop
quiet in that hollow way
only the dying get
thinking the kind of things
no one says
until there’s no one left to hear,

I was somewhere else,
wasting time
on someone
already erased.

He wanted to spend
what little time he had left
with me
his daughter.

I didn’t know
it would be the last time.
That it would echo
louder in silence
than it ever did in sound.

I wish I had known
the kind of goodbye
that doesn’t come back.

I don’t know
if I’ll ever
forgive myself
for mistaking a ghost
for something worth keeping.

For answering my father
with silence.
For letting his last request
rot next to a name
I won’t even speak.