KNOWING FULL WELL
was writing to you
carefully
knowing full well
how the choice
of a wrong word
can devastate meaning
this even though
whatever I did
manage to write
you would most
definitely
not reply to,
perhaps, I contend,
not even read
whilst
this happening
everything went dark
not just for me
but for everybody
and therefore
my forlorn hope
for future
communication
immediately dashed,
suddenly
no longer relevant
worse still, no one
left to
help either of us
understand
no one for us
to talk to to figure
this darkness out
This is a poignant and quietly devastating poem. The tension between the careful, almost sacred act of choosing words and the absolute futility of sending them into a void is captured perfectly. The shift from a personal, intimate silence to a universal “darkness” is masterfully handled—it makes the personal loss feel cosmic, and the cosmic loss feel deeply personal. The final lines, with their sense of stranded isolation (“no one left to / help either of us / understand”), are haunting. A beautiful, heartbreaking piece.
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Thanks. I had also wanted it to suggest pr just hint at an apocalypse that was so sudden it came like the switching off of a,light.
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