If there is a gift, that to you I could bring
It would be in a box, bought from time’s wings
And inside, twenty four volumes, with sixty pages each
Bookended by sunrises with a noon in the breach.

Once again your laughter would echo off hills
And the sound that now haunts me would not give me chills.
But the present can never be mine to give,
For I don’t have the power to make you live.

I can’t even put a smile on my own face, for such a blight
Would be going to the funeral, wearing all white.
And my demeanor I won’t quickly renew—
It’s a reminder, my dear friend, of you.

And, like a shadow without a source,
Like a perfectly reasonless remorse,
Or a promise that isn’t real
That’s exactly how these memories feel.