My Goodbye Note - a poem

Last week, I wrote this poem and something interesting happened soon after I finished it...

My Goodbye Note

For five years, I wouldn’t wear matching socks
out of fear that if I died that day
people would think I was boring
or normal. 

Mom, I’m sorry you found my goodbye note.
You were never supposed to see it unless
I never came home.
But I left it careless there on my floor,
floating obvious on my ocean carpet.
So when it caught your eye
and you fished it into your shaky net of fingertips,
when you cradled then unfolded it,
did the paper open up
into watery grave before you?
Did my handwriting look like a sinking ship?
Did it glow like St. Elmo’s Fire
or splinter like sea soaked wood?
Did my intro, “Dear friends and family,
I need you to know I’m as sad to have left you
as you are to see me go…” echo
in your mind like the sound of casket closing?
When you read it, surely more than once,
did it feel like I had already set sail? 

I didn’t intend for it
to steal the breath from your lungs
or make solid ground turn
to riptide beneath your feet.
Did your chest hollow and knees creak for me?
Did you sink onto the edge of your mattress,
a field of floral bed sheet
like funeral flowers? 

I didn’t write my goodbye letter
into suicide note
because it was February,
the thaw was near
and I didn’t feel I was drowning anymore.
I only had to write it because
December taught me what death was:
high tide rushing toward sandcastle heart
to watch my best friend,
a daughter,
turn to newspaper article,
to know newspaper ignites
too quickly for water to put out,
to sprinkle ash into the lake and watch it
float away.
I wrote it because I didn’t want my CD collection
to collect dust if I died
on the way home from school tomorrow.
Wrote it so no one would have to fight over
my bracelets or treasure maps.
Wrote it so the task of sorting through my closet
wouldn’t feel so much like digging
up a shipwreck.
So you wouldn’t have to put oxygen tanks on
before submerging yourself in
my sea of a bedroom.
Wrote it so it wouldn’t seem like our harbor of a home
was a dock completely flooded with tragedy
or a bow cracked and crushed to meet the stern,
pushed by the current to every unknown shore.
Wrote it so the following months wouldn’t feel
so anchor heavy
and soggy with memory. 

So people would remember
I wasn’t the kind of girl who
wore matching socks. 

By now, Mom,
I’ve either grown gills
or kept my head above the surface long enough
‘cause I’m still here, still swimming, fingertips so pruny
and even though I haven’t lived on land for a long time,
I know I still have a drawer,
deep, secret
as the bottom of the ocean
full of mismatched socks at your house
That you can’t bring yourself
to throw away.

She didn't know anything about this poem, but about 3 days after I finished it, my mom texted me this:

I didn't ask, but I wonder if she started going through the socks before I began the poem or if I wrote the poem and then she sorted through the socks. Either way, it seems that we were dealing with the same thing at the same time without knowing it. Looks like there's not a drawer full of my mismatched socks anymore and she is able to throw some away. Good thing I wrote this poem when I did, hey?

Love ya.

Ellen