So Long

If I had known, she said
if I had known the price I'd pay,
I might never have left.
But who knows
what the price of staying
would have been.

This is the way we make our lives,
my friends and I,
with gentle conversation,
half-full tea cups and open hearts
set out between us
on kitchen tables,
mourning together the losses that come
with every choice life brings us,
moving together in the evenings,
while children play at our feet,
towards places inside us where
sadness and contentment become one another.

But you know, she said
it had been so long
it seemed so long
since I had felt
someone touch me,
touch my cheek softly, tenderly,
and say,
I am here.

For me too, I said
it seems as if
it's been so long
and who knows
what price we pay
for staying, for leaving,
for reaching towards, for turning
away from these,
our choices, our hopes, our dreams
and this,
this softness, this tenderness
wherever we find it,
however it comes.

Susan Wismer
Guelph, Ontario