By Laudeep Singh
She once wrote me
a letter
handwritten in blue ink
smudged as if folded
and opened
way too many times.
“I read your poems”
she said:
“And I felt like
you had lived inside me
before I was even born.”
I never replied
not because I didn’t feel
her reaching through the lines
but because
I didn’t know what to say
to someone who mistook
my survival
for salvation.
She underlined every sorrow
and memorized the silence
between my stanzas.
She told herself
if she could write such beauty
out of grief
then grief
must be beautiful.
I was not her wound
but I was the mirror
that taught her
how to trace it.
They found her
with a book of mine
clutched to her chest
like a rosary
and I
still alive
became the poet
she died reading.
Do not make me a God.
I bleed behind the lines.
I write because I ache
not because I know.
If only she had written again
if only I had said
“This is not the end
you are meant for.”
I would have torn my poems
to spare her
that last stanza.