Our prompt for this day was a song, Each Coming Night, from the album Our Endless Numbered Days, by Iron & Wine. One suggestion for writing was to take the existing structure of the lyrics as poetry and ‘weave in your own people and phrases.’ This is the approach I chose. So for the first four stanzas, the first lines are exactly the same as in the song. The rest of it is original.
Will you say when I'm gone away
"My son was here but he couldn't stay."
The world was not enough to hold you.
You escaped its grasp and left me
gasping on the ground as you ascended.
Will you say to them when I'm gone
"Your grandson's understanding
was both beyond his years
and not at all
and would not reconcile
did not compute
could not go on."
Will you say when I'm gone away
"Your brother was out of sync with time."
He didn't see
how who he was
belonged here.
He didn't know — as you, my surviving child, know —
he and the world
would grow
and that he'd see the light of day.
Will you say to me when I'm gone
"You live on."
In the games you played
and those you created
in the things you loved to do
and the people who love you.
Not you, though, living —
but a shadow, an outline
a fading sketch, an echo.
What will I say?
You are gone too soon
a death "out of order"
that shuts everything down.
I've walked through the wrong door
nothing looks the way it should
this is not my life
this is not my life
this is not my life.