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When I Depart, Remember Me Softly
I did not come to win the world—
I came to feel it bleed.
To taste the silence in the hungry mouth,
To weep where no one dared to read.
To my family—
You held my name like worn cloth,
never quite knowing what I was stitched to become.
But I loved you more than I could say.
I only wanted to bring you light,
even if I lived inside the dark.
To my friends—
You saw my laugh, but not the war.
You heard my poems,
but not the prayers that cracked beneath them.
Thank you for the brief light,
for letting me sit near your fire
even when I smelled of rain.
To the world—
You were beautiful and cruel,
a temple built on thorns.
I kissed your mornings
and buried my hopes in your nights.
I do not leave with hatred—
I leave with ache.
An ache too heavy for bone.
If you remember me,
remember the boy who still believed in stars
even when the sky refused to answer.
Remember the man
who loved with silence,
and wrote his soul into stone.
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I go not in bitterness—
but in completion.
Let my absence be a soft wind.
Let my name be dust upon your altar.
And if God still counts the tears of poets,
then maybe I was heard after all.
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Farewell.
Not in despair.
But in peace.
—Chanda
Copyright ©
Chanda Katonga
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