The fog here is thick, until you step into it.
The storm rages until you get to its eye.
I wish this same principle could be said of me, too.
But like a gas giant, you could slip right through me with
the smallest amount of pressure.
There is no calming sense of self at the core.
Gravity does not apply to me.
There’s a boat on the lake cutting through the fog. And then nothing.
More waves.
More birds.
The fog covers it all up again.
The sun slinks and the tide comes in, or is it out? Does it matter?
The moon controls it in some way—the push, the pull of the waves.
At least the lake looks blue today,
looks green today.
The geese are in the water now. The families are packing up.
The ice cream shop is closing.
And I do not remember if I was ever here with you.
This, of course, is a collective you.
Could mean you, my reader,
could mean one specific person,
or two
or three
or four;
could be whoever I'm thinking of when I reread this to myself.
That’s the funny thing about the litany of loss.
It all starts to congeal.
Waves crash against the rock. Starts to chip away, create something new.
That’s what memory does.
It’s not permanent. It’s malleable.
Flexible. Bendable. Moldable.
It smells like lakewater. Like
fish and sand and mud and
gulls and rocks and shells and
algae and fog—thick, thick fog.
Smell is supposed to be one of the biggest memory triggers, and yet
I cannot place a single memory of you here.
And that’s mildly crushing.
So I would take you here:
to where I wish the air was
saliter and less earthy.
to where I come sometimes to think.
where the clouds are so thick and puffy and
the setting sun makes them look like cotton candy on the Fourth of July.
where the sun’s reflection on the water
turns the green lake pink.
where the geese are back out of the water and
onto the shore.
I would take you here with me.
Into a new memory.
Homemade. Handmade. DIY.
write your grief prompt #14: imagine writing a letter to the one you have lost, what would you show them?
