Grief

it tracks you like a bloodhound. And it lingers like the moldy air in the cupboard like when we forgot about the bread we bought at the last farmer’s market of autumn before that long weekend in Denver. But the deal has been made long ago, and you can’t escape it. 

it shuffles you to your seat like that one usher who always volunteers for the local theater. The man with the yellow glasses. And it bolts you to the fabric. it shifts and dances like silhouettes beneath the curtain. I'm in that house - holding on as tightly as I can, clutching my lungs in rigor. And my eyes are so wide here in the blackness. Desperately darting around for light to make prisms of tears. Or for those silhouettes. Waiting for something. Anything. 

it lingers and watches, stands vigil over you. it lords. it lies. Until it locks onto you, actors and stagehands in the wings. And you’re reminded of your place in all of this. You’re reminded that you’re immobile. And it clambers from the edges.

You start to forget what their voice sounds like. What their clothes smelled like, even when they’d drape them over the dining room chairs after you told them umpteen times how badly it bothers you. You miss being bothered.

I’d give everything to hear the boring story about empty lobster traps in Rhode Island. There really weren’t any details, still I remembered each one. I’d bathe in the wonder of the number of traps - whether there were 14 or 17 or maybe 13, but definitely not 12 because I would have remembered an even dozen which is why I think there must have been 13 because bakers dozen sticks out but maybe that was because it was the 13th of August when we went.

And after some time, you grieve grief itself. its place has been ripped and rooted out and supplanted by targeted ads and limited series on netflix and increasingly infrequent check-ins from friends.

Sometimes when I’m lucky, I lay in the dark. In the interim state between sleep and waking. Bolted to the fabric. And when the heat kicks on, i hear the coffee grinder. And the warmth on my face is from the burners on the stove. And I look into your eyes and brush your hair behind your ear. Today, like most days, I am not lucky. I’m drowning in sweat. And the house only smells of the ashen, wet heat from the furnace. And if I find the strength to bring myself to my feet and clamber to the stove and start the coffee grinder, I’ll plead with Christ to fill the house with tired stories and sweatshirts on armchairs and unrecycled cans. The heat is working, and so is my heart. I think. And I reach for the small kettle, and rest it on the burner. And it’s quiet. And it’s tidy. And it’s warm. And it’s real.

(note: i really, really like this one. and i may commit the cardinal sin of the point of this blog by revisiting it and refining it one day.)