Pain like none other
darkness around every corner
heartache to make devils weep
I could never have imagined what I feel now
the agony of her loss is so strong
it drowns out everything else.
Hope is dead
and there is nothing to comfort me
I’ll never hear her voice
and worse
I’ll never escape the image of her laying there
surrounded by blankets
resting on a cardboard box
burning
The sound the furnace made
my sister sobbing
puking
her gray hair streak that wasn’t there when I saw her the first time
or maybe in my agony I missed it
the lack of scent
aren’t the dead supposed to smell?
her face. not hers and hers all the same
in my mind is a building
white stone and stark in its beauty
stairs in the front leading up
a dim cool spartan room
carved from snow white rock is it granite? or marble?
in the center of the room is a dais
but before we get to that….
roses. 20,955 roses. One for each day of her life
all of them red. Red for passion and blood.
each bunch in a clear vase
now back to that dais….
a flat white dais raised to waist height.
on it, there she is as i last saw her.
shirt raised to cover her trach. She’d appreciate that
hands loose
gray hair streak
and a white sheet draped from mid torso down, covering her legs.
dead….but not in my memory
Why did my mind want so badly for her to wake.
why can’t it all be not real
Why can’t I make it more than a week without a late night breakdown
Why can’t I make it more than a few hours without visiting that room
How do I move on from an unspeakable loss
How do I continue?
worse is the realization that all humans die
and my daughter will one day hurt
as does my mother’s daughter now.
my mother passed recently. I need to write...and yet all I can get out is babble.