I never met you before, but I looked at you through the glass several times a year.
You had eyes like the sky at twelve o’clock and a smile that could light up this whole town.
I never met you before, but I could tell by the way your shoulders were strong and your back was straight that you were sure about yourself.
The way you placed your hands effortlessly around other people, friends, family, your lover.
I never met you before, but I knew about you through friends of mine. I saw you once at a party I drifted through. Laughing with your head back, young and careless, ready to take on the world.
You do not know me, you have no idea I exist but I see you, I see you through the glass with sky blue eyes and a smile that could light up this whole town.
I never met you before, but I looked at you through the glass several times a year.
In the month of June, when autumn came I read you were ill and I didn’t know what to do.
You don’t know me and I really don’t know you.
But still I admired you through the glass, observant in the storm you endured. As your twelve o’clock eyes of steady calm turned to a reckless sea of chaos in an unknown doom.
I never met you before, and the weeks turned to months and I forgot, I forgot to look at you through the glass.
It was early November on a clear blue day, when I read the tributes to your life, I realized you’d died, you’d past by.
A heartbeat pounded in my soul,
“This is not fair! You never grew old.”
A life taken to soon by a fated disease, and I think to myself, “what fools us mortals be.”
We live lives that are not our own, driving cars and owning houses with loans.
Working jobs just to save money for time away, “thank god its Friday,” is something that we all say.
But I can’t live like them, it never made much sense. Selling time on heartless tasks just to pay my rent.
I need my space, and I need unplanned days, I believe in fate.
And all these things I swore I’d be, and all things I’d do. But don’t you worry, I’ll remember you.
And I never met you before, and now I never will. But I will always remember the way your smile lit up this whole town and how your eyes were like the twelve o’clock noon.
Life is short, and we get caught in the system created for society, I want to change my ways while I’m young and looking at you through the glass has made me numb.
Did you do all you wanted? Were you who you wanted to be?
I left all these words unspoken, now my unfulfilled dreams wash over me.
You died on a Thursday in November this year, I thought about you all day, I couldn’t believe you’d disappeared.
And now I’ll never meet you, but your glass remains, I’ll look at it every once in a while as the years pour down the drain.
I promise to think of your smile, and how youth is wasted on the young. I will do everything in my power to achieve what needs to be done.
So rest in peace to a young warrior I never knew, but don’t you worry I’ll remember you.
– this piece of writing is dedicated to a young man who recently passed away from cancer. I never met him, but my friends knew him and I heard tales of his bravery.
I think it could also be applied to the celebrity culture of worshipping idols through the glass of screens and feeling sad when they pass, like we have lost a close friend.
Love and light,
Haley x
Haley Lauren Smith 