If I Could Cry

"I knew her, once."
Perhaps she did, but no one really knew me.
"She was a beautiful person."
Another lie, no one ever thought of me as that.
"It's a tradgedy that she's gone now."
Could anyone ever lie more? Perhaps her minds words were really these:
"No one ever really knew her, she was lost
in need of friends. I never reached out to her.
Perhaps if I had, she'd be alive today."
These words were more blunt, but more true.
At my own funeral, I wished they hadn't sugar-coated their words
Telling lies to make some happy
Out of false respect for the dead.
Yet, sitting in the back, was one who still cared
His courage finally moved him to step forward.
His were the first eyes
Full of regret that day.

"You should all be ashamed.
We should all be ashamed.
For we let something priceless
Slip through our fingers.
She did have friends, at least she called them friends,
but she never got the chance to speak her mind.
She was too nice, to critical of herself.
That was her fatal flaw.
If she had spoke up more, hurt a few feelings
She wouldn't be lying in this coffin right now."
His words shocked those there to 'mourn'
Yet not a voice told him to stop.
"Those friends she treasured so,
They had their good points.
They were her friends when
it was convinient to them.
Her writing was her life, she was lost without it.
Yet her friends were the ones who took it all away.
I saw the pain in her eyes
veiled by the laughter she let escape
to hide the knife that killed her soul.
I saw her pain as her best friend read from her newest story
Reading aloud in a mocking tone.
She was laughing, and I remember her words
So clear in my mind, so vivid, so sharp.
'This is really terrible.'
Her words held back her pain as she tried to make an excuse.
'I know, it's still a work in progress.'
'No, a three-year-old could write better than this crap!'
She smiled falsely in her response.
'Yeah, I know, I'm working on it..'
The friend continued laughing as she spoke.
'I'm just kidding, you know that.'
'I know.'
Her soul was broken. She never told her friends.
Now I understand why.
She could never understand
Why her efforts weren't good enough.
She could never understand
Why compliments never came from them.
Barbs came, as a joke, and she tried to treat them as such.
But a thorn is still a thorn, even if you have a rose attached.
Perhaps they didn't mean to hurt her.
Perhaps it really was just a joke.
Either way they did it, and they drove her to her grave.
I am not saying I am better than any one of you.
I am no better than any of you.
I could have saved her. I saw her pain.
I knew she needed someone
To love, comfort, and help her.
Things would be better off if I told her.
If I told her I understood, if I told her I cared.
She wouldn't have stood on the beach that day,
If I had told her.
She wouldn't have let the ocean water wash over her,
If I had told her.
She wouldn't have let her last breath out in bubbles,
If I had told her.
She wouldn't have committed suicide,
If I had told her.
Maybe her death won't end for nothing.
Perhaps we will all realize that
There are more of her.
Alone. Unloved. Unnoticed.
Maybe if we told everyone the truth,
We wouldn't have lost her,
and we won't have to lose another."
If I could cry, I would've.
If I could talk, I would've.
I wanted to tell him that I cared too.
I wanted to tell him all the things he never told me.
I saw the pain in his eyes as he left my funeral
but no one had moved to tell him they cared.
As he left that day, I knew where he was going:
to the ocean waters.