Letter to a sardine in an old tin can

This is not about a sardine can nor is it about a fish or by the by in a solitary window but maybe it could be about the bones that are left when it is all over.
A light drizzle falls against a solitary window:

…and bye-bye we said as we passed on from anywhere, bye-bye; you can’t catch us we said with our hearts pressing onwards and our sails on fire, we were never going to stop so you may as well get used to it we said.
We trudged onwards always, our coats too big, our feet too far away.

We stopped to watch a dancer lick her naked feet, unsure about time or the lack of it. She joined us then and we pressed on south, our will our compass, the road the magnetic lodestone that was always there for us in the brave moments of any uncertain dawn for whatever transpired, we would follow it until the endless mazes extinguish in that final coming home we could only dream about.
We took our epitaph very seriously amongst the survivors; we were searching out the waves of love and purity while swimming in the other stuff, yes we had a light but we didn’t know how to turn it on and the big beasty moved among the words well our buckets of kind being devoured by the sea we knew so well; and the sand did get in our pockets and the sun did ruffle our hair and the words were scattered laughter for the beauty to care, well oiled in the sun.
And now some lifetime later, walking beside us our journey not yet up…
The brutal there-ness of now devouring us from inside, spoken with the left hand, the other a cup of tea to build bridges with.

We were kind to dogs and little children and old grannies who’d lost their appeal as the waves swept around our feet of all we would delete in our lives to be free; and here’s to all the stuff we did floating amongst the seaweed and the rocks of where we are not now, driven into the high priest of our thoughts to capture that which could not be contained; but it was the same everywhere we went and we missed it all as we went even as we saw it all, and love made up the difference.
You had a stone in your shoe and a thorn in your side, it was a stone of you were not there, and for awhile that was a thorn in my side and a stone I tried to move on from, and then we were not there but gone into another sundown, another place, another adventure.

And as you coldly went into that sea I wept as your ashes were swept away, for all we’d left behind and held dear.
So now I go on alone and tell of us and when, but we were never so grown.
You were always pressing on, with me so far behind until even that was gone and I was alone, but I’d been there before full of another thing pressing on empty; and if these remnants are all I have left then perhaps I’ve spent it all with nothing left for the grave but the roaring memories of a life lived the best I could.

And when the dust of my bones in this letter finally comes to you will you accept it? And yes it hurts sometimes, but no more than I can drink down into my soul, hard as night and clean as day.
Wrap this then in one more tired cracker, some amusement, if that is what it must be, and pin it on your gravestone a trophy: you were right to stay and I was wrong to leave. But so many dawns saw me walking on. You didn’t know but once I rode a motorbike a thousand miles just to see where I should have been after staying behind that time, and perhaps that’s why I left in the end; but that’s sorrow for you where the winds turn out so sweet to be replaced with some another dying thought that strikes up the choir and the violin.

But enough of these things, the road calls as it has done for so long, and so one last time into the flavour plenty to meet.
And this dawn’s early morning rising, still half asleep with you to recall all we shared and lost as we made our way through this heaven or hell; what did we know to finally wake up in the dust of our lives broken and confused?
Back then when our love was fresh maybe we knew more, but we came and went so fast and then we were no more with all this time gone to think about it. And now I know I wouldn’t go back, I’m too old, and you can’t change that. So I’ll say goodbye to you now in case this is all the time I have left, and I will leave this letter with the daisy I’ve brought you, here beside all the memories that will forever rust with our bones besides all the roads we’ve walked.

Images from Pixabay