we only said goodbye with words

i saw Amy Winehouse's death on the news and I knew it was too late. instantly the feeling of a ship that sailed creeped in. except for a passing whim a few weeks back for you know i'm no good i hadn't paid any attention to her recently. i hadn't even listened to back to black from frist track to the last--ever. always in half, always a few. because there were always tons of other things to catch up on--amy was here and today and i had a whole past to devour--i had to learn and love and know so much--amy winehouse was here anyways. friends of distance we remained--i admiring that voice of hers everytime it came up-- singing low to her songs whenever they crossed my path.

but that was it. no need to lie now.

amy winehouse belonged to my time.

i knew when she came out, when she exploded. i remember watching stronger than me thinking 'well she isn't that pretty' and yet fighting myself to death to look away from the tv. i remember that quirky video with the dog and everything. i remember how strange she had seemed then. i remember when she went big seeing her on a tv screen -- in a far far away land at the age of 17- lying on the kitchen floor where she had cried. again not being able to take my eyes from her i had then discovered what had been coming to my ear all along--that growling roaring larger than life voice she had at her feet. that power that comes out when she opens her mouth. that was where the beauty lied-- where the magnet-like pull that kept me chained to the tv trying to figure it out.

what does it matter now? nothing, obviously. all those personal stories of the first times you listened to her or that time you cried to her or that very second which she had turned your moods around mean very little. all those add up to one huge impersonal story.

i did listen to the whole of back to black , after all. too little, too late, i listened to it with chill running down my spine, shievering at the midnight hour, scared of disturbing the ghosts of whom i had no acquaintance with. she roars even now in my ears--a woman, perhaps the only woman besides joni, that shows me that it is ok to love as a woman-- defining love through a woman's eye-- a woman so strong that even in her weakest minute you see that once she had that man--i don't mean that in a feminist way i mean that as a soldier wounded often and in a haze of misery often feel incompetent secretly because no matter how good those men that i am in love with, that i adore, get they don't ever mean exactly what i really mean to mean after all--

this isn't coming out great--i know--i can't seem to work out the details--i've been meaning to write this for a few days now and never really quite getting it out properly as i wish--what does that mean, again, nothing, nothing to the naked eye.

i had once written here that voices are like naked people--stripped of all the shenanigans---and i had written that they are like poets themselves--separate of the persons whom they are given to. and if there ever needs to be a proof to that i believe winehouse would be a good one.

unwilling i am to use her name--as if i am crossing some shameless boundary--but the last few dry days i only had her--listening to her voice--to her words --apoligizing silently for never having truly listened to her--because she would have warned me for many things that was bound to happen--but sadly i missed out--i missed out having a friend to talk to in the darkness of the night--a girl of power and misery and lonesomeness and spontaneity-- a woman to curve next to and listen to a heart broken love story--to listen to my own heart broken love story--

i have never been a toruble maker--never been eccentric or extraordinary. but now amy winehouse and i--we stand in some gray funeral scene where i seem to see her most clearly, staring at each other in the eye, i wipe a tear at the middle of the night-- we look at each other-- two woman of completely different storylines and i suddenly hear in these songs that she was just as broken and battered with one dissapointment or the other--like me-- but i--

i even more so-- because she was my time and i missed her.

so now i'm left with a handful of songs that make me wanna crawl next to a faceless woman on the floor and vomit all my broken tales-- hoping for if nothing else a black hole where you can put down your arms and surrender--