Over Christmas
I was fine:
my grief’s appetite suppressed,
a comatose beast of tumultuous emotions,
for once, not ready to strike at the smallest
hush
whisper
smile
look.
No fits of rage,
no bouts of nausea.

But my beast slumbers only when
you’re not there
to beckon it,

and when your laugh doesn’t echo
through empty hallways,
and your little bubbles of conversation
with my best friends,
waking it with a bucket of hot coals,

or when I don’t have to dwell on
how your smile plays
hide-and-go-seek:
a fickle creature that desires not to face me
on a daily schedule,
mine is ready to strike at any moment.

For when I was “home”
in my mere shell of reality,
with nothing but numbness
& ignorance of your existence
to patch up the holes
in the tattered quilt of “us,”
if only for three weeks,
you weren’t there.

But now that I’m back and you’re back,
that hunger awakens deep in my gut.
It bleeds,
it scrapes.
My beast longs to devour
a portion of my peace,
hour by hour.
And with each passing
look of your eyes in my eyes,
fear in yours & a transparent loathing shield in mine,
I am nearly crumbled
in defeat.