Speechless

We don’t talk about cancer, not straight away.
Our breathe skirts around the topic.
We describe the bad smell, the sticky scent on hair;
the shortness of appetite.
But never the prospect of death; it isn’t right to mention
that standing close to the tracks;
with the air rushing our face, makes us want to jump.
And I’ve started to write down my thoughts down in Swedish;

“I tre veckor har jag stratched
min tanke om dig på klisterlappar.
Så jag kan kasta dem i vinden;
när jag är trött på att påminnas om att du är borta.
Jag vet redan att min tystnad är ord förlorat i översättningen;
och du är en blind man söker efter någon till vård.”

“For three weeks I have scratched
my thoughts about you onto sticky notes.
So I can throw them into the wind;
when I’m tired of being reminded that you’re gone.
I already know that my silence are words lost in translation;
and you’re a blind man searching for someone to care.”

If I speak you will not hear,
I am only a mute girl fishing words;
from a page of poems-
leaving lines the size of cliff-tops
from which you could jump.

Jag nådde man en gång…
I reached you once…
when my bones weren’t a system of strings;
pulled apart by the distance between us.

Now you just walk away,
a stranger staring at the train station;
whilst a young girl falls.

Her knees hit the ground like the impact
is a tectonic plate, trying to re-connect.