REMEMBERING NATALIE
DEAR NATALIE
You stood behind the microphone at the Dangerous Kitchen, week by faithful week. With trembling hands and a strident voice you delivered poems born of a life well lived in the pursuit of things honest and just and true and merciful.
Then came the storm; on a bleak and cold Monday morning, thinly dressed and with no direction home, you faded into the foggy mist of unknown time. You disappeared without a word, left not a note of farewell.
And we, standing on the grey shoreline, peer out across the ocean into the eerie silence. There is just the rustle of small waves caressing the shore; a small song of tenderness singing harmony to our voiceless sorrow.
Our hearts stop beating, the hollow in our chest dries up and there is just an echo behind the microphone where you once stood. We are missing who we are, for we are one another and there is an empty space in the room, yet somehow still filled by you, Natalie Alexandra Browning.
This night, behind the microphone, we will speak of you; words of course, for words are the only paper we have to wrap our sorrow in; some will be our own words, others those we have found in the pages of books that have sustained us in the mists of unknown time.
Somewhere we believe you will be listening. There are things you would want us to know, no doubt. But for now, we can only guess at what they might be. Tonight we will speak of you fondly from the hollow in our chest.
With love,
All of Us
