Saying Goodbye

Loïc wrote this when he was seven. He’s not usually melancholy, though he does sometimes like to stand very still on top of a pedestal or tall tree stump for twenty minutes, like a statue, face distant and immobile even when you try to make him laugh because you’re a bit worried about where he actually is.
He didn’t write the poem for homework or anything, nobody suggested it, he just wrote it.



Saying Goodbye

If I don’t say goodbye, I will
Never see my family again.
I would love to stay, but
I know I can’t because of the war. If I don’t say goodbye
The war would never end because
I didn’t say goodbye. I don’t
Want to say goodbye because I
Know I would have to leave my
Family, good, good, goodbye.

November 2003