Don't tell me it wasn't yesterday

It was only a year or two ago, wasn’t it?

Running around a cabin on a campsite in Denmark

Shouting ‘wooooooooooo scary ghosts’

And annoying the shit out of Sam?

 

Wasn’t it? We all had our tops off.

You never needed an excuse for that.

Working on a building site one summer

And showing everyone your biceps.

 

Yeah alright. That was a while back.

Beckham and you had the same hair.

Kinda. And the more drunk women got

The more you could stand in for him.

 

Hung over on minibuses through Wales.

Drinking through the hangovers toward footy.

Calibration is everything. Just find that sweet spot

Between merry and fighty and happy and sleepy.

 

Well. That was a few years ago I guess.

But how do you reconcile it

When it feels so raw and real and recent?

Maybe that’s the key to carrying on.

 

I saw you online the other day

Alongside loads of others, twatting about.

I could have messaged you about fuck all

But didn’t. That’s how it is, isn’t it?

 

Last time we talked I didn’t know

That it would be the last time that we talked.

It’s inevitable, but it’s too early,

And it’s beyond unfair, and tragic and all

 

Those words that are hollow.

I wonder, when you put on your Bangor shirt,

Last time, that you knew

It would be the last time. Maybe you did.

 

There are always people left behind.

And we wonder why you and not us.

Why us and not you. But no answers

Come and we shout silently into the void.

 

So. Mate. If you can. If there is a way,

A liminal crossing for an eternity or a moment,

Try and tell us about the ghosts, because

It is scarier to think there are none.

 

It fails. Language. It fails.

There is too much to process.

The world is tangled like a mind, like a life;

Strange, frayed and fraught

 

Then gone.