To Steph

My dear,
I’ll keep this short and sweet,
like you, and the tartes au citron we’d eat,
and the wine we’d drink in summer sun
on rickety chairs in your garden.

We’d giggle, laugh and sometimes sing,
and often end up wondering
if passers-by could hear and smile  
at the love and fun we shared for a while.

I missed you when you moved away,
was happy when you married again,
but we kept in touch by phone and card,
and realised that however hard

life became, we always had each other.
But now you’ve gone, my adopted sister,
I live in hope that that the love we shared
will never die,
my dear.

Kim M. Russell, 11th February 2025

This Tuesday’s Poetics at the dVerse Poets Pub is with our own romantic poet, Sanaa, and we are writing poems for Valentines.

Sanaa has researched the history of Valentine’s Day and the story of its patron saint, which she says is shrouded in mystery.  She tells us that Geoffrey Chaucer was the first to record St. Valentine’s Day as a day of romantic celebration in his 1375 poem ‘Parliament of Fowls’. She also shares two of her all-time favorite love poems: ‘A Red, Red Rose’ by Robert Burns and ‘I loved you first: but afterwards your love’ by Christina Rossetti – I love the Rossetti one too.

Our Valentine’s challenge is to select one of the three options Sanaa has given us: (i) writing a poem as a recipe for a love potion, throwing in some berries and cream, maybe a dash of cinnamon and chivalry, telling our readers what love means to us; (ii) writing a poem in the form of a love letter, which can be addressed to ourselves, to someone special and/or in memory of a person who has passed; (iii) or bringing love into the 21st century by exploring the dynamics of modern relationships, for example, social media, dating apps, and virtual connections, letting our poems decide whether technology enhances or complicates matters even further.

I wrote a poem to my dear friend who died last week and was cremated this morning in Limoge, France.

53 thoughts on “To Steph”

  3. the nostalgia you’ve laced the poem with makes the ending so heartbreaking for some reason I found these 2 lines especially evocative

    “and the wine we’d drink in summer sun
    on rickety chairs in your garden.”

    p.s. sorry for your loss Kim but also how lucky too for the both of you in this friendship

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  5. Bittersweet is heart at full magnitude and the joy here seems fullest for the loss. I’ve gotten to be good friends with my older brother – finally, over the past three years he’s been succumbing to cancer. I’ll still be texting him after he’s gone.

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    1. That’s good, Brendan. I’m sorry to hear about his cancer. My dear friend, Steph, found out she had a tumour and had it operated on in December, started chemo in January, and died last Wednesday. It all happened so quickly, and I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye.

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  14. Kim, I am so sorry to hear of the death of such a special friend. And it sounds like it happened so suddenly, which makes it even more of a shock. You have written a beautiful tribute. I can see the two of you, sipping wine and giggling. So sorry for your loss.

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  19. Dear Kim, Losing a Sister-Friend [or a Brother-Buddy as I have recently] is devastating. I am sending you healing energy, keeping you close in my thoughts and heart.

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    1. Thank you, Helen. It has also come only a couple of months after losing Sarah Connor. I read one of her poems and one of mine last night at the reading to raise funds for the hospice where she spent her last weeks.

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