"coward" slips through your furrowed lips,
dripping with disdain.
I don't blame,
you for it.
It stings still,
the way only truth can.
It clings to my mucked-up mind,
filthy with guilt and shame.
Again, I don't blame,
you for it.
Did Mr. Hyde face the consequences of Dr. Jekyll?
I'm Mr. Hide.
Can't two face, my mistakes.

Hot magma grief crawling up my throat, spews out my mountaintop.
Slow motion consumption,
smoldering lava of sorrow breathing for the first time.
gasp
for
air
A world of color turned soot soaked black.
Submission, there is none.
No rest for the wicked or the anguished.
Unhurriedly and deliberately,
obliterated.


Everythingmovesinslowmotion.
Yourworldstops
all else carries on.
Anditdoesn’tmakesense
What lays in the wake of grief?

Disrespectfully silent.
For such a geography shifting event.

You may beg,
plead,
wrought to your knees,


The landscape of my heart vast,
The volcanic mass of grief left behind something inside,
What?
  
Melancholy ash.
Birthed of lava.
Agony.
Anguish.
Gloom and
Purgatory.
Heavy in my chest.

Holy Tribulation.
Despondent.
Dejected.
We're in hot water now,
Boiled in a breath uncaught.
distraught.
Third degree, cremated.
Solomons wife.

Enraged.
Incinerated.
Vexed.
Unyielding.

A kind hand cauterizes my weeping wounds only for a moment.

Can I cry yet?
Leering behind my eyes, down my throat,
falling to my feet, filling me.
Heavy,
I can't pick myself up,
Legs like cinderblocks.
I have to keep moving.
Things to do,
People to see,
Obligations to keep.
Don’t hug me too long,
Don’t squeeze me too hard,
For fear it all comes bursting out.
The levy might not hold!
Don’t look me in the eyes.
Don’t gently stroke my hand.
Don’t say something soft.
Don’t dare penetrate.
For even the smallest of cracks might send these salty waves over the estuary edge.
I must wait.
Alone/alone/alone.
Wait to be alone.
Wait.
Weight.
Don’t share the weight.
When you’re in the shower maybe then you can cry.
Convince yourself it’s just the bath water running down your face.
Not a break.
Just a momentary escape.
A little crack in the ****.
I have to hold it in.
The big wave hasn’t crested.
If you let it out a little bit at a time-

Time
Time
Time
Just a little more time.

- maybe it won’t hurt so much when it all comes bursting through, shatter me,
to pieces.
How will I recover? Who will I be? Who am I now carrying around this grief? How will I survive?
The reaper comes for us all.

Today I recoil from the world,
loud, chaotic, self-serving.
I draw close to my mysterious self,
one that feels unknown even to me.
I kiss my heart with tender lips and tell her-
You don't have to be so angry with the world,
but it is ok to step away.

If love is to gold;
Your hands are to Midas.
In a pan of penne pasta,
Or sizzling out a fresh cracked la croix.
Touched my tummy,
Full of gold, Midas nurtured safety.
Don’t worry bubble guts,
Take a whipper for love.
Plunge, jump, reach,
go ahead,
Fall.
Into my pile of blankets on my sheepskin rug.
Share in ecstasy of being witnessed,
I call you to the stand!
In 1803 where we both reached for the same mango.
I loved that bodega, in that other life, where our souls crossed paths that last time.
Or so I can imagine.