POETRY | Mending Song

Occasionally, there are conversations I have that come back to haunt me. My own advice like the tick of a clock in a hallway I haven't walked down in nearly long enough.

Once upon a time, my sister - an extraordinary, formidable writer in her own right, and one of the most eloquent voices on grief and loss I've ever known - sent me something she'd written in that same vein.

And moved as I was, changed as I was by the articulate grace and curiousity she never ceases to show in that space of herself, I remember saying to her that one day when she was ready, I hoped she knew that joy could be a teacher too. A place you could write from, with meaning. With weight and pathos. That joy didn't have less importance in life, simply because it was not loss. Simply because it could be fleeting.

I have vague memories of my own heart as it was at the time those words spilled out of me. An organ without a tune that carried so much less than it does now. Back then, there was a flannel shirt kind of warmth of hope and contentment that sat on the porch of me like those things belonged there, with a G&T in one hand and a fingertip or two, tracing the small dance of nearby firelies occupying the other.

From her who I used to be, back when she felt warm and it was the summer of safer things, came this poem. I wrote and sent it to a friend. I had so much hope in my heart when I did.

I miss it.

Draw me out, love.

Soft into the hall of my heart so I can feel it:

the space in the dark where I first began to know.

Timber underfoot,

The hour unfurls me mid-step, away from what I was

and the outdated seasoning

of who I feared that you might be, but weren’t.

Salt of the earth against kitchen sink.

Draw me like a bath to welcome tired things.

Rain inks relentless letters

Back to the sky it left behind.

What I feel, sings

And has a name in the night in another tongue -

That ache of missing the clouds from whence

we’ve fallen, whence we’ve come.

“But see,” your palm tells my palm, “Nothing is cold here.”

It’s the moment I realise the good fire was never done.

Hope kindles to remain unburnt,

the old ways of letting old fear hold sway

fall away to the floor, lessons like cut ribbons,

Ready to be untied and unlearnt.

Draw me like a map you know

Will always lead you home.

The lamps remain at rest. Lay lines kept like lyrics

to the songs that save us

Fill notebooks propped open, soft in stasis,

waiting for the wonder of what the day might bring us.

Let other selves keep and the morning worry for itself,

The cut flower of the sun will fill other vases

Soon enough.

Until then, love.

We take hope from the shelf, to whatever end.

Revealing the patched wall behind,

Echoes of old tenants, old flames, old friends.

We slow dance in the the refrigerator light

of ancient stars - kept hidden until we knew

What to make with them -

And mend.

© Erin Brown 2026