Death as Creation: A Series on Grief

I’ve never immediately posted or shared a poem I wrote and revised in an hour, but I’ve been praying for courage. Here we are.

And here’s a reminder that courage is MESSY and teary-eyed and not-always-ready and yet it shows up in spite of all that. And it shows up hand-in-hand with pride.

My unprocessed grief is hitting me lately like tidal waves. Over and over and out of fucking no where. Call it Mercury retrograde or the full moon—it’s no longer willing to go unnoticed. And more than that, it wants me to create something of it. From it. That’s what it said to me when I asked it what it wanted.

“Honor them,” it told me.

This is the beginning.

〰️

I.
It stalks you, watches your
every twitch and turn—a wild
black panther, jaws around your
open throat. Guards the space
behind your eyes where the
tears pool; platinum diamonds,
sharp objects, protecting others
from their overflow—until you’re not
you anymore. Begging to be noticed;
lace roped around your chest until you
can’t feel the earthquake/empty space/
spontaneous combustion: where did
you go? And around and around
and around and a neon carousel
of commotion, pinks and greens and
golds and the spinning, it feels like home.
Here, everything tastes like
salt water. The horses hooves like
the weight you’ve always known,
but you’re floating away now. Go,
baby, go… A body atop a body atop
a mountain of unanswered knowings.
You wonder how anyone can see you
through the smoke signals, if anyone
can feel a broken heart; phantom
pieces blown like wish weeds into
other worlds. Do our lost parts find us
when we cross over? Does it feel like
home where you are? I’d believe in
resurrection but it tastes so much like hope.