Something is Coming.
This is a poem I just wrote to help me start relating to the death of one of my closest friends.
---------------------------------------------------------------
This is a vagueness.
The haze on the horizon is whispering to me
and inching in as it talks to surround me on all sides.
Grieving is falling.
Slowly, over a period of days.
It’s the weight of your head collected in your heels.
Angles become less precise.
Outlines blur.
Grieving is undoing.
To mourn is to unscrew your separate parts
and let them hang,
one from another,
useless and heavy.
Grief, for a time, is a dark grey cloud
floating along the edge of a clear sky,
such a soft and beautiful threat.
It’s smelling fire off in the distance
while picnicking in a wide field:
No need to run.
You can just breathe in where and what it is,
pack up
and walk away.
Unhurried.
Maybe it’s the sharp stab of Absence
that makes you feel like
something else is coming, though.
The whispering horizon promises
it’ll be something heavy,
maybe something to replace this
general wash of inadequacy.
In that way,
it seems Grief is forever arriving
never arrived,
always just outside your bedroom door
tapping lightly at night
like a tree branch against your window.
It’s the television channel of your periphery changed --
now all you see is static
and all you hear is marching in the distance.
It’s the thickness of the air
in the waiting room at a childrens' hospital:
bright white walls,
paintings of clowns all hung at an angle,
a firetruck spilled sideways on the carpet
and yellow plastic chairs but
something is missing
why is everything so dense and careful?
and the clowns are sad
why are the clowns sad?
they’re smiling but their eyes,
their eyes are sliding off their face
My Loss is painted bright red
like a sports car or
a pair of Converse sneakers.
My Loss is round like an empty bowl
or a billiard ball.
It has no edges,
no ends.
You keep turning it over.
It goes on.
As we speak,
words are chasing my Loss down long white corridors,
around corners and back through again.
Every word gets exhausted and gives up.
My Loss has outrun them all.
Until my Loss outruns Me
and leaves me panting in its wake,
with an empty room in my chest
where that loss once lived
and I experience
for a moment
what it’s like to be
empty
and I can just breath in where and what that is
pack up
and walk away
unhurried.
---------------------------------------------------------------
This is a vagueness.
The haze on the horizon is whispering to me
and inching in as it talks to surround me on all sides.
Grieving is falling.
Slowly, over a period of days.
It’s the weight of your head collected in your heels.
Angles become less precise.
Outlines blur.
Grieving is undoing.
To mourn is to unscrew your separate parts
and let them hang,
one from another,
useless and heavy.
Grief, for a time, is a dark grey cloud
floating along the edge of a clear sky,
such a soft and beautiful threat.
It’s smelling fire off in the distance
while picnicking in a wide field:
No need to run.
You can just breathe in where and what it is,
pack up
and walk away.
Unhurried.
Maybe it’s the sharp stab of Absence
that makes you feel like
something else is coming, though.
The whispering horizon promises
it’ll be something heavy,
maybe something to replace this
general wash of inadequacy.
In that way,
it seems Grief is forever arriving
never arrived,
always just outside your bedroom door
tapping lightly at night
like a tree branch against your window.
It’s the television channel of your periphery changed --
now all you see is static
and all you hear is marching in the distance.
It’s the thickness of the air
in the waiting room at a childrens' hospital:
bright white walls,
paintings of clowns all hung at an angle,
a firetruck spilled sideways on the carpet
and yellow plastic chairs but
something is missing
why is everything so dense and careful?
and the clowns are sad
why are the clowns sad?
they’re smiling but their eyes,
their eyes are sliding off their face
My Loss is painted bright red
like a sports car or
a pair of Converse sneakers.
My Loss is round like an empty bowl
or a billiard ball.
It has no edges,
no ends.
You keep turning it over.
It goes on.
As we speak,
words are chasing my Loss down long white corridors,
around corners and back through again.
Every word gets exhausted and gives up.
My Loss has outrun them all.
Until my Loss outruns Me
and leaves me panting in its wake,
with an empty room in my chest
where that loss once lived
and I experience
for a moment
what it’s like to be
empty
and I can just breath in where and what that is
pack up
and walk away
unhurried.