Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
I don't remember the last thing
I heard you say.
I didn't know I was supposed to.
Didn't know there would come a day
when I'd search my memory
for the sound of your voice
and find only pieces.
A word here.
A laugh there.
The way you'd say my name
when you were pleased with me,
and the way you'd say it
when you weren't.
I wish I'd listened harder.
I wish I'd known
that even ordinary conversations
were things I ought to keep.
And now,
there are so many things
I want to tell you.
Small things, mostly.
Things that happen in the middle of a Tuesday.
Something funny I know you'd understand.
Something I've finally figured out.
Something I wish I could ask you
because you always seemed
to have an answer.
And sometimes,
things that are not small at all.
The things we never settled.
The words I wish I'd chosen differently.
The questions I still carry
like stones in my pockets.
I talk to you about those, too.
Not out loud.
Not usually.
But somewhere beneath
the noise of an ordinary day,
I am still speaking to you.
I tell you when I'm frightened.
I tell you when I'm proud.
I tell you when I'm angry
that you left so much unfinished.
And sometimes
I tell you that I love you,
just to see if saying it
still feels like something
that might reach you.
I know you cannot answer.
I know the silence
is not a pause
before you speak.
But every day,
in the quietest part of me,
we have another conversation.
And perhaps that is
what loving someone becomes
when their voice is gone.
A lifetime of things
you can no longer say to them,
and a heart
that never quite learns
to stop.
KEEP MY WORDS ALIVE
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Poetry by Britt Wolfe:
There are conversations we never realise will be our last, ordinary words we would have held onto more tightly if we'd known we'd never hear that familiar voice again. Where Your Voice Used to Be is a poem about the strange, enduring intimacy of grief, about all the things we still want to share with someone who is no longer here to listen. It explores the love, regret, unanswered questions, and everyday moments that keep us speaking to those we've lost, long after the world has fallen silent. Because sometimes the hardest part of losing someone isn't having nothing left to say. It's having a lifetime of things to tell them, and nowhere for the words to go.