My grief and I are well-acquainted.
Two strangers sharing the same body.
How else to explain grief but as a mirror?
The grief and my body.
The grief or my body,
It is my grief every time.
I torture it,
I lay in it,
I set it on fire.
A still burning star,
A still living thing,
A still life of my first night alone.
The room is still, too.
It does not breathe
It does not turn over, reach for my hand,
Cough, or flutter its eyelids open onto my face.
It is just a room with two bodies.
I hold my grief,
I do.
I hold it until it stops bleeding,
Until it too is a lifeless thing,
I hold it.
How many more times can I say I miss you
without flinching?
How do you write about what it should've been without sounding like an asshole?
Without losing yourself in the fantasy?
Like a hymn,
I give my grief to God but it doesn't go anywhere.
This is where the poet in me stops breathing,
And it hurts,
It hurts,
It hurts to breathe.
Pulsating through my body like adrenaline,
Fueling these poems with empty traces of your name.
The grief opens my mouth and says your name.
Over and over,
Chanting pleas of worship.
How are you still standing?
The grief knocks me over,
Like mid-day waves against the rocks,
And now I am a hollow body of devotion,
I tend to my grief like a garden
On my hands and knees,
and watch it
Grow into weeds.
At least there is life here somewhere.
I lay in my grief.
Two bodies laying in the dirt.
How can you just stand there and watch me die?