Grief Written

 I was sitting next to his door with my face in my hands when I confessed, “I keep forgetting to breathe. I keep holding my breath and I have to remind myself to inhale and exhale.” I think about that often, there’s a lot of secondary thoughts to that one. But really what I mean to say is that the act of breathing is supposed to be reflexive, In the way writing is to a poet. But each night as I remind myself to breathe I try to construct lines of poetry in my mind. And I find myself restless. There’s too many eyes, real or perceived. And the red notebook by my bed still has engravings of letters long given away. etched into the page. In between practiced breaths and stilled fingertips I imagine those letters combusting, bursting into flames until nothing is left but ash. But Ash. A return of pieces I had given away.  And even in my imagination there’s still a spark left inside of me. I want to write something beautiful. Something so aching and familiar that I can recognize the fingerpr

He told me I was dead to him  So I step into the grave As shallow as it may be Just deep enough from digging my heels in  Resist the urge to eulogize or erect a tombstone   Forgo any semblance of a funeral And lay to rest the parts of me he’s grown to recognize  Praying to a god I no longer believe in for something akin to a miracle  To bury the love I once held  Without resurrection  Or divine intervention  No ghostly figures resembling a shadow of the woman he once knew — held, loved, devoured whole There is no unearthing Just death

My grief coexists in the twilight zone  Somewhere where contradictions meld together  I live in the twilight zone  Where I both miss you extraordinarily  And crave the moment the you in my poetry becomes something else  Where you are no longer you, but the him in all my metaphors. Somehow I straddle the past, what I wish was  Along with the future, what I hope may be And in between the two is the multiverse where those two moments meet.

 My best friend sat in the corner of my bed watching me whisk furiously as I laughed to keep myself from crying, She’d been there all morning into the afternoon and the cup of coffee I had made her had been replaced with a glass of wine. “Why are you still doing that?” I carefully poured the filling over the toasted pecans, watching the crust disappear. “I promised him I would.” She took a sip from her glass and I could see her mulling over her next comment. “You should spit in it.” “He probably would like that,” I told her. “Maybe I’ll just etch the word humble into a slice.” She laughed, and for a moment I thought her careful examination was over. When I removed the pie from the oven I sighed in defeat at some of the burnt edges, shrugging while I said “it’s probably just a breakup pie anyway.” I remember when you had asked me if I could bake a pecan pie which I replied surely that I could. Within minutes I had saved a recipe, within days I had bought the ingredients. When you notice

 Every Sunday morning starts the same. I make myself a strong cup of coffee and curl into the corner of my bed. I clean my apartment, Strip my sheets, And write a grocery list for the week. This morning the cat and I stayed in the bed, She slept atop of your pillow that still faintly smells like you. Carefully set aside the night before, showering before I crawled into the sheets as not to erase the smell of you. The day before, I made your bed for the last time and wondered if it at all smelt like me. Strands of my hair were strewn across the pillowcase, evidence that I was there. I swept through the hallways and rooms, a ghost lingering in the familiarity of our relationship.  All I’ve ever known of grief is how to grieve the living, It’s your heart walking around outside of your chest. It’s odd to see something so intimately apart of you, scanning items at the self check out at the grocery store — although, that couldn’t be you. You hate self checkout. I’ve never suffered a death, a