On grief

The night will sit like silt on your shoulders and you will feel fat with thought.

Thick skin will rub raw between your toes and you will notice it. And you will surrender.

The blankets will crumple around your hips and feel anything but right,

and you will pretend to be asleep but the nightlight will stun you awake, 

and the vermin outside your window will scramble to prove existence and

you will realize how nighttime passes only when you notice that it does. 

Minutes will become inescapable. But the shadow of a tree will appear as her shadow

and the wall will cast a memory that you are forced to reremember. And you will shake 

your head no. You will say, “come back.” And she will not come back. 

Instead, the hardwood floor will crack a response and you will smile at the pointlessness of it all. 

You will recall the milk from the jug from the cow from the dinner as you confuse the stock exchange 

at the same time. And the urine from the milk will need acknowledging and 

the dog from the park with one eye will remind you and remind you of going blind, 

and you will cry because you want to see and because you can see and because 

you will want to see again tomorrow. 

Eventually, the morning will come, and come again, and nothing will matter. 

You will watch the grass grow green, feel the sun slip to shadow,

and you will sit and stare and sit until suddenly, the world makes sense. 

Part of you will wish that it did not. You will become scared by how little you think you know 

and you will feel pathetic. And glum. And your jaw will stick with grief, a cavity too empty to fill. 

No one will tell you this until it happens. 

So, until then.