Dear Death,

I am writing to tell you

That I am sorry for the absence of my presence

This year from your sight.

Life, for all it is worth,

Has found me a soul

Not black like before, nor made of onyx stone.

Though life is but a masquerade of pain

A hopeless waltz in the face of aversion

Joy, if it is truly a word,

Love, if it be more than just feigned,

Worth, if any single thing can have such a place,

Has landed softly upon my hearth.

---

Gentle caresses and soft lips,

Arms wrapped around for comfort

Lackadaisical nights of wonderings

Serve to envelope that which once was

Nothing more than a dark nebula of hope.

---

I expect you not to show this year

For being jilted as I have you is terrible

But I could not help such a thing.

Yet I do, for certain I guarantee, ask forgiveness.

Never did I mean to so shut you out of my life.

---

Death, as always, circles through my mind on lonesome nights

Though not as once before.

Merely now, as you have seen, it is meanderings of thoughts

To what you truly are beneath the cloak.

Is there such a thing, or are you just,

Like this love I feel,

Merely a figment of a childish imagination?

---

A wind blew in through a window,

Blowing my letter off the table

Towards the boned feet of a dark stranger.

A smile, though not seen so much as perceived,

Spread across the emotionless, calcareous face.

---

Reaching out his alabaster hand,

My estranged friend laid a tiny package on the table

Beside the retrieved parchment of my letter.

---

"Happy Birthday,

May your joy continue

And euphoria consume all that is bitter to come.

Cry not for want of loss

Recall only that which brings the heart painful, wholesome remembrance

For life is too short to weep for acerbic notions

And too long to forget all which has happened. "

---

With that, my dearly departed friend

Walked out the door of my life,

-His feet clicking subtly the wooden floors-

But promised, beyond all comprehension

To come back in a year

As always he does

A true friend of his word.

---

The letter lay unfinished,

Gracing the gray garbage can with its presence.

What need is there, to bring about the memory

Of that which is already known?

Or to try and erase that which will always be felt?

---

AN: My apologies for the lines in the poem, for some reason the site would not allow my spacing to work without them. Hope you enjoyed the poem, though. And thanks for reading.