grief is fingernails in your palm
when you're standing in a public restroom
wondering why everything feels wrong.

grief is not having worn mascara for four months
because streaked ink-black cheeks isn't a look
you want to be known for.

grief is dancing on the verge of tears
in a math class, because your mind wanders
too often and death looms too large to avoid.

I can feel an echo of the kinship
I felt with these songs in the cold and dark, isolated on that hill
I can't feel them resonate now, though,
I remember still, and so think I should feel
But I don't see the path back, or ahead, the light I desperately
Asked someone for once,
The memory of dreams
Desolation at reaching futilely for them,
Or peace with this rooted spot
Whispers flow through me with the music
Whittling away the hollow bones inside me,
This brittle bark shedding from my skin so like the tree
Inked to my ankle,
Dying and dormant and bent
An echo of springs past like
The outro of a song that hasn't played for a while
And clouded remembrance of the lyrics
I haven't lived in a while

I miss Texas - My family fighting,
The smell of the hot concrete,
That full-bladed grass and the fire ants
The southern drawl and the heavy air-
Sticky and slow like molasses
Down where you nap through the heat of the day
And eat fried chicken, corn and mashed taters for dinner
Playing in sprinklers and
Patios made of tiny rocks,
Acorns and sunflowers and furniture
That weathered the great depression and WWII
The little creek, the metal slide in the middle of July,
Those mcDonalds toys one grandma collected
One grandpa bouncing me on his knee
The other taking me to the zoo
And great grandma playing scrabble,
Those baby pictures of my dad,
Back in a place where I would've culturally said "pa"
Sometimes I miss it all back in Texas,
Sometimes I say I'll never miss it,
Now that I see how grandma's a racist, family don't believe in LGBT,
In liberals, in me
But then I think I've lied
I just miss Texas from back when I was too young to notice,
And before everyone died.

Where are you going?
You've packed your cold heart up,
Got up early to warm the truck,
Well that sunny smile don't shine
So well in October