the plural of grief is grief,

in our lives, we busy ourselves
accumulating various assorted
grief, some physical, most mental,
those stories when retold, first
make you groan out loud,
every-one asks
what’s a matter, no spilling beans,
you shake ‘em away with
a smile and a “just life”
and it gets
dropped

if you’re so young, that you haven't
started a career of serious collecting,
the objects that will decorate every
place, in every state, wherever the
airy transplants, you won’t be
surprised, thinking you “forgot” to
pack them, for they travel light,
though, they weigh more than any
hope chest of unworn garments that
will never be discarded,
even when
hope is so long gone,
it is still an
unrecognizable

And yet,
the plural of grief is grief

and there is a singular story,
a lost love, a guilt for letting
someone get lost, leaving them
unknowing that if you could,
you’d whisper shouts of reconciliation
for days, to cain assuage the years
when they lay unspoke,
brike broke inside a human chest
of petty
grievances

I have one,
midst all my knowns, which
even not even now, even
in my truth serum poetry
that will not be confessed,
lest you’d beg me to
never write again,
move on to parts unknown,
let that gory story abide in your own,
in your windowless palace,
with your
other locked up secret treasures
wrapped
in black
tissue paper

my own chosen grief,

unspoken, unwritten,
and resting restrained upon an
invisible line
that lives on my tongue,
it is fresh, imaged, just
a hasty taste away, when it
resurfaces at its own chosen
speed, its own chosen need
to be rebreathed, when least
desired, least required,
**in other
words,
when it chooses to emerge,
& it chooses you,
at the precise right
always the wrongest
time & place