the light that stays

the light that stays

for rhys, whose light outlived the dark

eight days after my eighteenth birthday.

the wax from my candles still soft,

the flame almost the colour of his hair.

it felt like when i blew mine out,

he breathed out his last.

when he died,

i did not bury him.

i carried him.

a lantern i never asked for,

burning quietly inside my ribs.

he never got the chance to celebrate his twenty first birthday

so i lit twenty-one candles instead

for every year he should’ve been here.

i’ll make my own celebration louder,

as if the sound of his drums are still keeping rhythm through me.

he was not my brother

but he filled the space where my brothers should have been

he made it easier to breathe in a house once filled with grief, poisoning the air in every room.

somehow losing him

taught me that love can survive loss twice.

i still visit his mum, still walk in expecting to hear his voice.

she pours the wine, lights her cigarette

the flame catches, almost as bright as his smile once was.

she tells me the youngest drives his old car now,

and the middle one laughs just like him.

sometimes i close my eyes and he’s out the back again

hands black with grease, cables running along the floor

still trying to start the car, and maybe himself too

some nights i light a candle

and pretend it’s like the lantern he has left me.

it flickers like his laugh did

loud, then soft,

then gone too soon.

i used to think that grief was just darkness,

but it’s not.

it’s the light that stays,

even when the room is empty, even when the candle is out.

grief is the warmth in my chest

it’s the echo of drumsticks

on a night that never came.

at night i think about how he would’ve grown, who he would’ve loved, the songs he never got to scream along to.

i used to be angry at the dark, but now i understand

some lights aren’t meant to shine forever,

i carry him with me,

not like a wound,

but like a lantern.

something warm.

something that glows.

he didn’t get to grow older,

but i did.

so i carry him with me

and when i turn twenty-one,

i’ll raise a glass under the lantern’s glow,

and tell him

we made it.

in loving memory of my best friend Rhys. The redhead boy with drumsticks in his hands, grease on his fingers, and a light that never stopped glowing. this poem is for him, for the boy whose light didn’t go out, it just changed course

i still see him in every sunset that glows too orange, every song that feels too loud, i see him in the warmth of his mum’s kitchen, and the brightness of a flame. this poem is for him, and for the light that never left, My lantern.