So Long

You say goodbye so many times,
Almost every day of your life,
But you fret about not getting
To exchange that final goodbye.

Presumably, you need closure,
The hardest part of the story
To do right, finishing a tale,
The ending, the farewell, goodbye.

Grief is loss without the ending,
Not for you. A story’s over,
And here you are, still going on,
Aching for a better goodbye.

Imagine it were otherwise,
And when the book ended, you died.