Jenna Felice, SFRevu
Jenna Felice is standing
behind a stall in Confluence.
She is talking with passion
about Century, about fiction
caring and confident,
and I decide I like her.
Memory, bronze that moment.
Let it fall into time
marked an end, not a beginning,
a stifled promise;
a friendship that was just a bud
which now can never flower.
How it hurts to cast you
into the past tense.
Bronzed into memories
frozen in old attitudes
closed away from change
that melts the living like lost wax.
It hurts us, not you.
The past encloses you like shrinkwrap
no present tides can touch you
you are borne away behind
nothing can hurt you now,
nobody can reach you.
What burns us you cannot know
that life goes on, goes forward
empty of your presence
and we must go on with it
missing you always
leaving you behind.
It catches in the voice
when we must say of you “she was”
and never, now, “she is”
the things unsaid,
the things you’d want to know
that we can never tell you.
It does not help to rage
to fight life as it sweeps us on.
All we can do is live each day
knowing this day may yet be all we have
for us and for our friends
and call our memories precious.
11th March 2001, Swansea.
