I haven't written anything in over a year.

My chest has risen and fallen with the track of the sun, like a neanderthal burial covered in flowers.

I have wept for myself, I have wept for my friends, I have wept for my grandfather now in my lungs and in the soil,

but still I haven't written anything in over a year.

I went to the zoo one last time with my confidant, rode up the long elevator so steep I would fall off with a sneeze.

I have felt the last rays of sun before winter, I have felt ice on my eyelashes, I have felt the length of winter, stretching out into eternity, stretching out way beyond what I can touch,

but still I could not bring myself to carry a pen.

I have heard a phone call I've dreaded my whole life, the stony silence of a room full of bad news when the ice cream clutched in my bird bone hands hit the ground.

I have met the ground and the hard concrete, I have met death sitting on top of a cherry tree, I have met a woman calling herself my Nana but half of her is dead,

And I guess I wasn't brave enough to grab a pen.

And I wasn't brave enough to see my grandfather in the casket.

I never saw the wreath of flowers, I never saw his wedding photo propped up in the corner of his little bed, I never saw his chest move and move no more, with the track of the sun, like a neanderthal burial, covered in flowers

but I did see the room full of people when I gave a eulogy
and I heard the lie I told that this wasn't an unfinished story, and I feel death and grim upon me like ancient flower pollen fossilized in awful crystals on my bones.

And maybe that is why I have been too scared
to write
for over a year.