| I can’t get the image out of my head
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| Of when I held you right there and watched you die
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| Upstairs in the back bedroom of our house
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| Where we have lived for many years
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| Your last gasping breaths, I see it again and again, as the breeze blew in
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| The room I still don’t go in at night, because I see you
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| Your transformed, dying face will recede with time, is what our counselor said
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| Who we walked to every Monday holding hands
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| Slower every week with your breathing until we had to drive
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| But then only two months after you died our counselor died
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| All at once, her empty office with no light on, as if her work was done
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| We are all always so close to not existing at all
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| Except in the confusion of our survived-bys grasping at the echoes
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| Today our daughter asked me if mama swims
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| I told her, «Yes, she does, and that’s probably all she does now.»
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| What was you is now borne across waves, evaporating |