When You Lose Someone
By John Herlihy

You miss the strangest things when you lose someone;
You hold as treasure what to others seems but a crumb.

The telling patter of soft feet as she walks in her slippers;
The intense feeling of exposure when she unzips her zippers.
Of all the ecstasy we found together as we laid there in bed;
He remembers mostly the sublime touch of her hand instead.
Twilight comes and goes, but the gleam there in her eye;
Enough to outshine all the darkness the world may espy.
When he looks out the window he remembers all he knew;
She didn’t like to be closed up, always preferred a view.
“What I need to look at,” she said, “are things that live.”
She filled her heart with life, made herself ready to give.

He recalled the first time he saw her, the first smooch;
The red shoes, the wavy brown hair, the golden brooch.
All the storms the world over may not diminish her smile;
Her laughter bubbled like champagne to level all guile.
How she loved to ask questions; but she never made a plea,
When she died, she took the visions they together did see.
That laughter of hers would last him for his entire life;
She danced across his heart all of the days as his wife.
What he misses most, what he wishes he could do again;
The way she held his hand, to see all that might have been.

When you lose someone, you miss the strangest things;
But never the total silence that her absence now brings.