I wasn't upset at the funeral today,

my cup already full of misery.

Death shouldn't be a matter of numbers,

but they were clocking up

in familiar places,

with unspoken duties of sadness.

The last one was different

which I couldn't attend

nursing my shocked and tender heart,

but families are full of expectation

and familiar strangers,

so this time it didn't count quite the same

as that man who had no reason

nor right to die the way he did,

who respected me for no reason at all,

and with so much love as yet untapped,

but sometimes a stranger affects us more

as death awaits behind the door.