I am Sorry I Wet Your Shirt with my Tears

Lily Knowles

Lily Knowles

Lily Knowles is a second-year Music Education student at UNSW and winner of the 2022 Blue Mountains Fringe Youth Poetry award. She is interested in finding beauty in grief and writing to know herself better, as well as reading the occasional mystery novel. 

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I love you, and I am in pain. Silently I weep against your chest. / I am in pain, and I want to die.
Unless that will make you suicidal again; then, I do not want to die, I simply ache to smile once
more. / I love you and me. We are together in this world now that you do not want to die. What a
shame that we switched! / We complement each other nicely - you with your bold absolutes, and
me, my pretty words. Together we shall walk arm in arm down city streets, and experience
explosive joy at how easily we are able to be true. In this truth we share we are together. And
together, we can be free. / But we are not together - we switched, and now I know what you knew,
and now I can’t speak of it lest you go there again. / Now I stumble down alleyways, lonely in my
false truths and listening for hope in your footsteps. / And you must know I am listening; my
meaning comes from the consequences of my impossible death, and for you to lose meaning again
will mean my pain is for nothing. You cannot die. I cannot live. / And we are together, and I love
you, but because you talk in absolutes you cannot say anything about the biggest pain we share. Of
that, you say absolutely nothing at all. / So silently I weep against your chest, as one hand gently
rubs my back; and I am in pain, as I feel your breath slow; and together you know and I know I am
crying for the both of us.