There once lived a boy in Willow Lane,
He had always been scared of the sound of coming rain.
Because to him, rain meant people went away,
And left their shadows where they lay.

He kept a box under his bed,
With colourful, faded ribbons, blue and red.
And for every time a person left,
He saved the words which they had kept.

“Goodbye,” said his mother one day,
Then she turned around and went far, far away.
He wrote what she said on a page.
And then kept it softly in a wooden cage.

Then his brother left after the summer break came,
A train, a chimney, one last wave.
“Take care,” he said, “I’ll see you soon.”
Then he disappeared beneath the moon.

His childhood friend moved out one spring,
And left him with a rusted ring.
She hugged him tightly beside the gate,
Then she also left, before it was too late.

He placed the special ring beside the rest,
Then hugged the box, against his chest.
Another goodbye, another scar,
A special person gone too far.

And then one night, when there was rain,
He mustered the courage to open it again.
He spread the words out the floor,
And soon found he couldn’t count them anymore.

There were words his kind mother spoke,
The ribbon from his brother’s coat,
The rusted ring, his childhood friend left,
And polaroids with their corner bent.

He held each farewell in his hand,
And finally began to understand:
He hadn’t kept the goodbyes or the words they said,
He kept the little boy, he was instead.

The boy who used to wait by the door,
The boy who thought they’d come back once more.
The boy who feared that letting go,
Meant losing everyone he had ever known.

Then he unlocked the chest,
And let the words leave their nest.
They danced like petals, in the sky,
And this time he let them fly.

He watched them slowly vanish, one by one,
Realising that after years, he was done.
He whispered softly to the dark night,
“Perhaps these goodbyes meant the right.”

He closed his chest and came inside,
Having no more memories to hide.
For some things leave and some things stay
But neither have to define your day.