In absentia

Sharing with you Sophia and I's favorite poem by Mr. Sid Hildawa. Rereading it takes me back to a special place and time. I remember so fondly how happy and sad I was when I first read the poem. It was published in CCP's zine then--right after Mr. Hildawa passed away.

Photo credit: Lara Jade

I have a special attachment to this poem. Maybe the novelty in his writing style may turn off others but I'm hoping you see the beauty in it. Because really, it verbalizes what we often fail to describe with goodbyes.

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IN ABSENTIA
By Sid Gomez Hildawa

The sadness within these walls is the quiet
sadness of space itself; invisible, inescapable.
And hollow, like a forgotten well I'd like to fill up
with flood waters, lava, or quick-drying cement.

Departures are never as swift as the flick of a light
switch, or as definitive as the collapse into dust
cloud and rubble of a tall building under engineered
blasts of planted dynamite. You walk out in particles,
leaving granulated good-byes like very fine sand. I'm
sure some remnant of your reflection is still around,
bouncing off yet another conniving surface. Like once,

stepping out of the shower towel-drying my hair,
I caught the elongated image of your tanned body
mirrored by the metal door frame's shiny handle. So
you're still within these walls, zipping in perpetual
motion, an amorphous mass of energized atoms in some
theoretical physics equation where the effect of
friction is suspended. You're still here, though
not as I would have it: seated on the bed, your back
against last night's pillows, your arm outstretched,
pointing the remote control at a flickering screen.

You're here in fragments. I gather your presence
with each sweeping of the floor, the way a poem
remembers its former drafts, collecting dead skin
cells of former selves.