The Yellow Ribbon

I looked for you in the
space between waking and sleeping,
in the moments before
day ends and night truly begins.

I searched for that place.
I called home.
Between your shoulder and chest
where I once learned
how to rest.

The memory of you
wraps itself around me still,
your arm,
strong, and certain,
a shelter I mistook for forever.

I felt safe there.
God, I felt safe there.

And then.

Like a sharp,
merciless blade,
the memory cuts,
twists, and draws blood.

Your words.

Cold.
Careless.
Cutting through
the illusion of warmth,
through the promise in your gaze.

For what I needed,
you could not,
or would not,
give.

So I gathered it all.
The longing,
the memories,
the ache,
the tenderness of me
and folded in on itself.

I placed it in a box.

Then I tied it with a yellow ribbon,
bright as the sun,
a colour I chose for hope,
for remembrance,
for the way yellow
is the light that lingers
at the edge of day,
a gentle promise that loss is not forever.

To me, yellow holds
the ache and the hope together.
I wanted the grief
to be beautiful enough to hold.

And I put it away.
On a high, unseen shelf
where my feelings go
when they are too dangerous
to keep alive.

There, they shrink
from the harshness
of belonging’s light.

They live in the dark,
in the quiet violence
that comes from
denying their existence.
Where pretending feels easier
than acknowledging all that once was real.

But sometimes.
At night.
In the darkness.
In that fragile space
between breaths,
I hear them.

Pressing.
Shifting.
Wanting out.

And I wonder.

When death comes for me again,
when I stand before him
with only his gaze
and nothing left to hide.

Will the boxes fall?

Will they split open
at his feet,
spilling everything
I tried so hard
not to feel?

Will the silence shatter,
as glass dropped from trembling hands,
breaking into a million sharp truths
that nobody ever saw,
held,
or named?

Or will I finally,
finally,
have the courage
to open them myself
before that moment comes?

I kneel in the wreckage,
to bleed in the open,
to confess.
Love that could not hold,
regret for what was lost,
gratitude for every small joy we shared,
and the ache that lives on in your absence.

That it mattered.

That you mattered.

That I
was there.

Poem by

Siân Williams