| Today I just felt it for the first time
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| Three months and one day after you died
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| I realized that these photographs we have of you
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| Are slowly replacing the subtle familiar
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| Memory of what it’s like
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| To know you’re in the other room
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| To hear you singing on the stairs
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| A movement, a pine cone, your squeaking chair
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| The quiet, untreasured, in between times
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| The actual experience of you here
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| I can feel these memories escaping
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| Colonized by photos, narrowed down and told
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| My mind erasing
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| The echo of you in the house dies down
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| October wind blows
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| It makes a door close
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| I look over my shoulder to make sure
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| But there is nobody here
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| I finally took out the upstairs bathroom garbage that was sitting there
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| forgotten since you were here
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| Wanting just to stay with us
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| Just to stay living
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| I threw it away
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| Your dried out, bloody, end-of-life tissues
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| Your toothbrush and your trash
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| And the fly buzzing around the room, could that possibly be you too?
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| I let it go out the window
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| It does not feel good |