How do you want to fill the silence?
After the tears, after the condolences,
after her friends have gone,
when all you have is the space
around you, you are left with the choices.

How do you want to live?
How do you want to fill
the silence she has left?

To her silence you might first add stillness.
To this select stillness you may then layer quiet.
To that chosen quiet you could perhaps
add the season found in the calm
company of those who remain
trustworthy. And then you may be better
equipped to harness the base silence,
and train it towards a distant hope.

A strange thing about grief —
It never truly dissolves in the rains of joy.
At times, it only blurs,
Eclipsed by the shadow of a darker grief...

I’ve realized that the loneliest place is not the bed,
It’s the echos inside my head.

You staggered through the double doors,
a trail of red on bleached-out floors.
The night was humming, wet and mean,
your busted life in Trauma Green.

I clamped your vein, soft as thread,
and dared the gods to count their dead.
You lay there broken, no ID,
just blood and ache and urgency.

Your heart fell quiet
inside my hand,
as if it paused to understand.
Then breath returned in stuttered moans.
your chest arched up to meet my own.

The wound was sealed.
Your sigh came slow.
You could have left.
You didn’t, though.
The sweat still clung.
Your gaze went slack.
You pulled the gown and turned your back.

I saw you later, checkout nine:
frozen dinners, boxed red wine.
You seemed like someone death forgot,
barely awake, missing the plot.

You looked right through. You didn’t know
the hands that pulled you from below.
You don’t remember. I can’t forget
how thin the stitch, how deep the debt.

I don't worship you because you are no God
but an angel whose wings reach out
your feathers just settled on my skin long
enough for me to understand there is a
rough edge to a feather,
when it scrapes past your skin
leaving you to have just a moment's taste
savoring
mourning the peaceful moment of contact
one day you sit down to pray for
heaven to come down again, closing your
eyes and never opening them
again.

i am no fortune-teller but i always
fuse my sanity with anticipatory grief.
this is no magic, but to say
“i already knew”, “somehow, i expected it”
is a comforting script for my love’s
trajectory.

so even in the middle of the night,
while i load my clothes on the laundry machine, when i fix the messy table
from an all-night review,
during my silent walk to the cloud,
in the bath, as i eat and breathe and
live on my own, i would utter in
my mind like a ghost leaving my throat:

“i miss you” for the days we have fallen
back in silence; “congratulations”
for all your victories i won’t be able to celebrate; “take care” for your
travels i will not know about; “good luck”
for the things you will bravely do;
“i love you” for the years ahead where i will not feel it anymore; “thank you” for all your
warm gestures i am only left remembering;
“happy birthday” for your rebirths
that will be unbeknownst to me.

i fear i have been holding onto you
only for my grip to end up a muscle memory;
for my love to wither politely and silently in
tiny increments; for my grief to send postcards into my doorstep—
one mail at a time.
only to remind me to rehearse my sorrow,
write script for my heartbreak,
choreograph my departure, design the right
falling into silence; my numbing and losing.

happy birthday, just in case my prophecy crystallizes, and i won’t be around next year.