I Knew Them Then Poem by Tara Teeling

I knew a boy,
he had a name
but it doesn’t matter now.
He sat a few seats to my left,
his eye to book, eating knowledge
with an appetite stoked by fear.
He took pride in what he knew
but never imposed himself,
quietly observing the ones
who thought they knew it all.
He was gentle, with a swift, windless gait;
we sometimes forgot he was there.

He was there:
reciting a monologue when
the sadness broke through and
tears actually fell, streaming crystal
down his face. We were awed by
this thing he could do, with strange, woeful cries
emanating from places unknown.
The alacrity mounting,
voice racking, eruption building…
It was then I committed his face to memory.
How could one not?
Once he finished, we sat astonished while
he calmly took his seat, cleaned his glasses
as though he had never uttered a word.
He seemed comfortable again, but
none of us were.

One May day
the boy, whose face I remember,
was no more.
The knowledge he loved
no longer sustained and with
a deafening crack of lead
his tears ceased forevermore.
The words petrified us in our seats;
we’d all been poisoned into silence.
Unlike his life, his death was not subtle,
and strangers were grieving in the hallways;
drama tends to arouse strange celebrity,
creating status and legend.

Then, someone spoke
and she was bitter and galled; ablaze.
He’d given away the thing
that she wanted most, she‘d said.
Before her on the table were
perfect apples and oranges,
a stack of books and
other things which hinted at a
hope for the future.
With a closed fist she struck the tabletop,
upsetting the fruit and the learning.

Her hair was long gone, and her skin
was pallid, rubbed with chalk.
Mournful circles hemmed
her eyes, while she looked to
us for reasons. We had none.
This girl believed in a deity,
so she prayed for life, begged for restoration,
while her blood flowed imperfect,
her faith mingling with it,
spoiling and dying.

She was spent from the disease
but her tears did not fall in self pity
nor did they fall in the name of the boy
whose face I remember.
She cried out in the name of nature’s obstructions,
and all other random empyrean enigmas.
What reason was there for striking down those
who had a real passion for breathing?

She confronted her mortality
with a quiet sort of rage, and
we sat silent, while she wept.
No one offered her condolences
because she could still hear us
and she didn‘t want our grief.
We did not realize her suffering,
or feel the heat of its breath,
and so we pretended it wasn’t real,
because it made us feel more alive.

One May day
she was gone; she’d slipped away
into a still night, when no one was
ready. We’d been warned,
but were disbelieving, nonetheless.
Having watched her wither and wane
slowly, like a flower in dry, cracked earth,
the truth of life had revealed itself to us:
even those who wish to rule
have no authentic power
in the kingdom they inherit.

We dressed in our black again,
this time to bid farewell
to a girl, who did not want to go.
A girl, whose last breath begged for more.
The guilt of the living was heavy in the air,
lacing with the aroma of incense and flowers,
choking the grief in our throats.
Anxiously, we waited for the music
to stop and for the church to empty
so we could pretend it had
never happened.

But it had.

I don’t believe
we’d be acquainted, had they lived.
The strongest tie between us,
was the lesson they taught of death
and its arbitrary, fickle finger.
Had they lived, I would not
think of them, as I do now.

Yet, I did know them;
wherever they are now,
I knew them then.