all that's left

Daniel Bogogolela

I think I know why my lover died,
I think I know why she's laying
in the cemetery.
It's because she'd been sick for long.
Her stories and poetry recitals were sick.

That's why she and I got expelled from
one gathering after another.
And she'd casually tell her peers that
my laughter caused it all,
that I laugh non-stop and very few
people care to know the reason why 
I does it.

One day I'll end it all but before I do,
I'll have to ask God to take my soul.
You know why?
It's been years since she had died but,
no woman is able to replace her.

I think it's because they're afraid
I'd leave them for her,
that I'll go cry by her grave.
I never cry by her grave like I did
by her bedside.
She was willing to die and always told
me the one who made her would soon come
to fetch her.

And I'm acting out my frustrations of missing
her by behaving like I'd never cared for her.
And the women I'm always talking to,
are only able to run the clock.
No other woman on this earth of us
will ever replace her.

Do you all like to know why?
She was always herself during her time
on earth and I'd never heard her comparing
herself to or envying the works of others.
Whenever some being did good.
she'd tell them right there on the spot.

She taught me about the mysteriousness of death
and her dream of waking up from a tomb being
an angel.
And I told her whatever pleases God.......
And her dream of being with me forever rests upon
him who made her.

I also made her in our bed that 
we two took turns making it.
And she thanked me for making
her a woman who seemed above any other.

To I, I told her every other day,
how empty my life would be like if
she had to die first.
And she did and I'm crying so much that,
all that's left within me is old memories
and fears.