The Last Thing They Said

The Last Thing They Said

She said she loved the weather this specific season
he said he would call me back before the week was through
they said goodbye at airports, exits, parking lots
and did not know that was the last goodbye they would use

I think about the ordinariness of final words
how nobody announces that the end is near
you are standing in a doorframe with your jacket on
and then that is all the conversation you will hear

the last thing they said was nothing special
it was coffee cups and car keys and so long
the last thing they said will live forever
inside my head where everything went wrong
and I would give anything to say it back again
to stand there in that ordinary moment one more time
the last thing they said was just the last thing
but now I cannot forget a single line

I have replayed it several hundred thousand times or more
the way the sentence ended, where the stress had been
if I had known that was the last connection being made
I would have held it open, stretched it out, stayed in between

but that is the thing about the final conversations
they look exactly like the ones before
no trumpet call, no lighting shift, no warning
just a screen door closing like a hundred doors

the linguists say that language is just symbol
a system built to move a thought across
but what nobody tells you about symbols is
how much weight they carry when you have taken loss

I will hold the last thing said inside a locked room
in the part of me that only I can see
and I will say their words back to the ceiling
the way they said goodbye to me