I try
to
walk
in
the
evening.
They say
it’s
good
for
me.
But honestly,
I’m
just
wandering
and
lost.
Without you
my love,
I am
a guitar
without
strings,
a
beggar,
sitting
at the gate
until
I
can
enter
and be
with
you.
Some people
wear
their grief
like a coat,
knowing
that
eventually,
it will
become
too heavy,
and
they will
take it
off.
Voila.
No
more
grief.
They tell
me
to
do
that,
to
take off
my
grief.
But
I
AM
my
grief.
It
is
the marrow
in
my
bones.
It
is
the blood
in
my
veins.
And
I
can
no more
remove
my skin
than
I can
take off
my
grief.
Someday,
I
will
not
grieve.
Someday,
I
will
be
with
him.
Someday,
I
will
be
dead.
There’s
a
hole
in the
world
where
you
were.
It’s
unimaginably
deep,
enveloping,
dark
as
night.
I
live
there.
I
sleep
there.
And I
will
be
there
until
you
come
back
for
me.
He
always
said
he
was
my
best
mirror,
telling me
that his eyes
were
all
the mirror
I
needed.
And
he
was
right.
But
he
is
gone.
Now
my mirrors
show me
someone
who
has lived
past
her
time,
a
ghost,
walking,
breathing,
but
waiting
to
die.
Without him,
I
cannot
even see
my
reflection.
Tell me
how
your grief
is like mine.
You lost
a boyfriend
in
high school
forty
years
ago
and tell me
that you know about
grief.
Tell me
how you lost
your first
boyfriend
to police
gunfire.
Thirteen bullet wounds
in
the
back,
hand shot off.
Official report of
suicide.
Tell me
that you’ve sat
with
your only brother,
watching
as his breathing stops.
Watching
as his heart slows,
waiting until everything
stops,
so the vultures can’t
harvest anything
after refusing
to save him.
Tell me
how one
of your
very best friends
died in your arms,
drowning
in his own
lungs
as he died
from AIDS,
breathing every
laboured breath
with him
until there
were
no
more.
Tell me
how you
and your husband
performed CPR
and
mouth-to-mouth
on not one
but two cats
as they died
of seizures
five months
apart.
Tell me
how you came home
from shopping
to find
your
husband,
your
one
true
love,
dead
in his chair
from a heart attack,
and still
worked on him
until
there was
no hope.
You
can’t,
because
these
are not
your griefs.
They
are
mine.
All
of
them,
a rosary
too long
to
tell.
You tell me
that your
true love
is in the hospital,
when
you’re separated,
but not quite
divorced.
Mine
is
dead.
But please,
tell me
that our grief
is
the
same.
Tell me
that I
need to suck it up.
Tell
me.
Everyone says
they want
to help.
It’s
not
true.
It’s
a
comfortable
lie.
What
they
truly want,
is
for the grief
to
vanish
or for it
to
recede
in
the
distance,
like
the
tide…
safely
far
away
from
them.
The house
is
clean.
The house
is
empty.
And
I
am as much
a ghost
within
these
walls
as
he
is.
I wish
I
could die.
I am
so lonely
without him.
And only
the touch
of
his hand
can make
things right
again.
And so
I wait,
a ghost,
trapped until
my time,
waiting.
