Obituaries

I’m sorry
I didn’t know you had died
I didn’t know
Until five years had gone by
You must have been there
On the obituary page
A photograph, black and white
A few words, meaningless
But at least, if I had seen it
I would have known
I would have recognized you
Immediately
And I’m sure
My mother would have seen it and said
“Such a young girl. Your age.
Now dead.”
And I would have said something like
“Such a shame. But such is life.
In the end, we must all die.”
And it is true,
Young or old,
Death won’t leave us alone
But I should have known
When you were gone
I would have said a
Final goodbye
But I’m too young
To make obituary-page-reading a habit
Like most my age,
I won’t find a familiar face on it
No one I know will be on it any time soon
Not for another forty or fifty years, at least
But you did, on a long ago day
You made it to the obituary page