Poem: Before He Was Gone

Before He Was Gone

I missed him
for years, already, almost
enough for decades
to be counted
between the time
when we spoke,
when I did not think of him
in the past,
a person I knew
before the train
had left one station
for the next,
and was I the one
who rode it away
or the one on the platform,
was the fog on the glass
my breath, or his?
It does not matter now.
I missed him already,
but it does not matter
the way I missed him
then.  You miss him now,
and I still miss him,
was missing him already,
but not the way
it is to miss him now.
The old pain
does not go
because of the new one.

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