The sun fell down (c) Marie Lamb 2019

Another little writing prompt from a different place.  I let it 'run'.. see what comes out, come back to look at it again later. // I didn't mean to write it this way.. but it's all true.  That day I missed a call from my aunt three times in a row and that never happens == and I was scared.. and I was on my way to the garden to sit down and call her and then my dad called.. and it was really him, and he had just fallen, and he tried to tell me it wasn't really bad, that he had just been clumsy, ... we had a good talk.. and I can't even really remember what about.. this and that... that was august the 7th it was in my call log. I remember that.. because my aunt was calling to try to make sure she could stop and visit with us when she came august 21st. on her way down to visit him because he wasn't eating well and she and my uncle, his younger brother, were going down there to see what they could do.   Anyway, the poem ended up being about that.. and it is too heartbreaking, and I'm just leaving it here for now

The Sun Fell Down
(c) Marie Lamb 2019

The sun fell down around us while I had my eyes on the sky.
The light went out.  I was not expecting it.
Darkness crept in around the edges, pink and gray
then the last bit of chalk dust was blown out and black settled in.

I lay there resting against the back of the green chair,
lost, until the calls of the night birds
became louder than my thoughts.
The brilliance of the stars attacked my eyes, far from the city lights.

But I know that what I am lacking is that sense of you.
That your thoughts are near to mine,
in tandem, across space, as they often were.
These stars have always been far away, but not always with you.

I took a moment more to drink in the light,
before rising slowly in the darkness,
and pushing my way across the stones towards the lively house,
away from the garden dead with frost, but sown with memories.

The air, for a time, was brighter there,
in the green chair that now reminds me of you.
It was where laughter and noise and motion still clung
like drops to a window after the rain.

It was where I sat when the fear gripped my throat,
to think that the bad news had finally come.
But it had not, not then, and when it did,
it wasn't in your own voice.

I had been so relieved that day, to hear your voice,
and to hear you laugh, and tell me it wasn't too bad.
And of course, I knew it wasn't true.
The fear told me what I did not want to hear.

The head can be too good at ignoring the heart.
We both brushed it away between us,
and listened a little harder.
Because we knew there were things that were not said.

I do not want to sit here in the dark,
with my own thoughts, unforgiving in their viciousness.
They wake me in the night and ask me what else could be done.
They wait for me with the sunrise and be sure I know it was nothing.

It is equal parts, release and revival,
of the shades of the night and the memories of other days.

Some days we strive to forget, and some nights we struggle to remember.
Days of light and nights of stars,

All I can do is remind myself that stars are light, too.
That we, are light, too.  Burning.