You died in October.
Perhaps that’s why October
never learned how to let you go.
Every year, when the air turns cold
and the trees begin surrendering their leaves,
someone opens an old book
and you are alive again.
A raven finds its perch.
A heart begins beating beneath the floor.
Somewhere, bells are ringing.
Somewhere beside a darkened sea,
a love refuses to stay buried.
And there you are.
You taught us that beautiful things
could also be terrible,
that grief could have a voice,
and madness could have a rhythm.
You made rooms for the things
people preferred not to speak of—
sorrow, obsession, fear,
the thin and trembling line
between loving someone
and being haunted by them.
Maybe that is why I found you.
Not because I loved the darkness,
but because you understood
there could be beauty inside it.
You have been gone 177 years,
and still we speak your name.
Still the raven waits.
Still the heart beats.
Still the bells ring.
Still we return to your pages
looking for whatever it was
you found waiting there in the shadows.
Writers are supposed to die twice, they say:
once when the heart stops,
and again when the last person
speaks their name.
If that’s true, Edgar,
you have only died once.
And I don’t imagine
the second death
is coming anytime soon.
—Guyton
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