How can I access these feelings
I’ve never felt before?
No experience can measure to the
pain I feel internally, fragmentally.
I’ve never felt real pain,
but I can write.
I can imagine how it is to feel this way
is this indirect or insincere?
I’m not sure.
But I feel it.
In my lungs I feel it.
In my heart I feel it.
In my brain I feel it.
Pain I’ve never experienced,
It’s inside of me
and I can’t make it leave.
How do I make it leave?

I packed you perfectly
like one packs organs in ice
to preserve them--
to keep the memory breathing
in a box of souvenirs from our six years
fragmentally put together,
until I'd need to relive them again.

I scanned our pictures like x-rays,
the bones glowing silver linings,
blurred and blue.
You always light up.
In any recollection,
you will always be the clarity
I connect to.

I have my moments-- Don't you too?
Nothing is what I thought it was.
I feel you pulsate like blood
under a bad bruise
I packed you perfectly.
You didn't move.

That which
has gone before
days that are
no more

but memory
never sleeps
even fragmentally
some remnants it keeps

how blessed
are those
who have no tears
know not life's throes

of anguish and pain
and what have I
to say?  my sorrows
I hide.  You asked: 'Why?'

But I can't refer you
to the file of my life--where it's kept
I know not---therein, forgotten
in dust and oblivion wrapped

for none could ever escape
from the all-pervading force of fate
free-will, courage, defiance
all drops in failure at its wrathful gate

yet, somehow, I don't know how
these my long-suffering tears
have given me more strength than I deserve
I prevail despite the onslaught of tumultuous years.