You looked like you were a girl of nineteen or twenty; and now learning
That your age was thirty, I still can barely believe it.
You were like many a sweet girl on this wild world turning.
You were capable of receiving many a blessing, if the world would give it.
Your life was a jumble of good things and bad.
There had been bad peop0le who had treated you like dirt;
And their force was still felt, still painful, still mad.
You seemed to me like a skittish, frightened deer,
Those early few times when I was around you.
You were full of suspicion, unease, and fear.
And then came the day when I finally found you--
When I reached the vulnerable real you inside,
And you decided that I was a friend.
Since then, many days have slipped down the slide--
Gone to their long, inevitable end;
So many star-shone days, which the stellar depths deride--
Since that day that I finally made you a friend.
And when you liked me at last, I glowed with a pride
Like that of a careful suitor, after many efforts spanned,
Who finally achieves a wild doe's trust,
Till she is wiling to eat his gift from his hand.
But time's mirror is kept free from dust,
And all that we know is soon buried in sand.
I cannot tell what went on in you in inner fight
That found final fruition in the last sad deed,
The self-extinguishing of light
That sees much sorrow and too much need.
I only know, I wish it had not been so;
I wish that a word or an action of mine,
Or of someone else, had saved you to grow,
And continue to let your bright light shine.
Your friends would have helped you; we wished you the best.
You had many more friends, than you knew, on that list.
But now it's too late, you gave up the rest.
And now we must mourn; and you will be missed.
If one word were changed, if one deed had been different,
What a great difference, if you had been saved!
And if life were given, instead of lent;
And if sorrows in life weren't so deeply engraved.
Everything in me says: This should not be.
It should not, it should not, have turned out this way.
Too sad of an end for a too sad story.
Could you not see the good things that life has in its day?
And better times were coming your way.
But I suppose every soul has its limit of misery.
You were tired of the trouble; your note said you just wanted to be free.
A painful past pushed into a barren now,
With many a sad and bad memory.
You took took the way out, when you found that gun. 
It was the mistake of a bad moment; but now it has to be.
Now it is a mistake of eternity. 
Forgiven for you, I hope; as I hope also forgiveness will be for me.
I wonder if you could have guessed
That you would get so many tears from me?
I sometimes forget how, but my tears always remember how to pray.
Such a sweet flower has fallen from the bough.
And from my heart, I say:
I loved you and cared about you, as many others did, and we still do.
I hope and pray that you truly are free--that you still are you--
Somewhere--and finally happy--somehow.

==============================
Written by Michael LP, aka MLP
aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC, aka (thanks to Luna Marie) Mr. Poet
Copyright (C) 2011 by Michael LP.  All rights reserved
(I still copyright my writings, for my estate)