The body can dispel intruders
By way of torture, force and flame
Yet there is not anything cruder
Than the tug-of-war of loss and shame
that refuses to leave where it has came.
Bad meat leaves a footprint
easy to track;
Loss leaves barely a hint
like needles in a smokestack,
invisible until it attacks.
Grief has no sturdy structure,
disguises itself as a stray animal.
I can't euthanize it
like I did her;
I can't watch it die like I did with him.
It wriggles into the coziest coil of brain matter
and sleeps; when it tosses and turns
the body spooks, trying to find
an intruder.
The body can't expel
emotions by more
than way of
tears;
How I wish I could
push it out of
either end.
Jan 24
Jan 24, 2026 at 7:37 AM UTC
The body can dispel intruders
By way of torture, force and flame
Yet there is not anything cruder
Than the tug-of-war of loss and shame
that refuses to leave where it has came.
Bad meat leaves a footprint
easy to track;
Loss leaves barely a hint
like needles in a smokestack,
invisible until it attacks.
Grief has no sturdy structure,
disguises itself as a stray animal.
I can't euthanize it
like I did her;
I can't watch it die like I did with him.
It wriggles into the coziest coil of brain matter
and sleeps; when it tosses and turns
the body spooks, trying to find
an intruder.
The body can't expel
emotions by more
than way of
tears;
How I wish I could
push it out of
either end.
Grief has no structure, and neither does this poem.
Within a 36 hour timespan earlier this month, I had food poisoning, cracked my e-reader screen, and had to put a cat down. Now the entire household is sick and my mother is, according to my brain, barely holding on.
It's been a rough year.