Today, I adapt to the prompt from day 6 on the NaPoWriMo challenge but it is day 17. Since all prompts are optional, I take this liberty with no feelings of guilt (!) Maureen Thorson describes the task as follows: “[…] This might seem like a bit of a downer, but I challenge you to write a valediction. This is a poem of farewell. Perhaps the most famous one is John Donne’s “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning”, which turns the act of saying good-bye into a very tender love poem. But your poem could say “good-bye” (and maybe good riddance!) to anything or anyone. A good-bye to winter might be in order, for example. Or good-bye to the week-old [E]aster eggs in your refrigerator. Light or serious, long or short, it’s up to you!”
As a semi-confident pessimist, my heart takes me to a serious goodbye, one I have dreaded severely during my daughter’s infant, toddler, formative, teenage years and even early twenties. For I had feared to leave her without a mother when she still needed one. Now that she is a young but very mature adult, I am able to shed those feelings of dread…
my mother, grieving over her own
believed I must leave before I arrived
my melancholy is meant to be
don’t you, *Bir Tanem, ever think thus!
I
grieved over her;
him, whom you know of;
myself, the once intact one;
my accidental life
them, who loved me so
yet migrated one by one
I
aching heart
I
burdened years
I
a *can torn from *canan
I
on eternal leave
had arrived this time
You
just don your prominent smile, Bir Tanem!
Let your beautiful self evade all ills!
Hold that delightful thrill in your eyes!
Life is stunning, as it is arduous.
Hurt is incredibly real but so is joy.
You
keep at your path through and through
don’t forget to taste others, too
demand from your crossroads – one or two
to not close you in with whomever!
Whether a mate or a lover,
make sure to only have a *dost beside you.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Turkish words in translation:
Bir Tanem: My One and Only
can: life; soul
canan: the beloved
dost (in its original meaning): gender-neutral friend for life; bad-time friend
hülyaswritings 