Grief Written

 This is not poetry But I’ve taped a string of words I found and cut from a magazine across the back of my phone it reads, “A full return of optimism.”  The tape is peeling but I don’t mind. I whisper the phrase to myself every time my finger runs against the lifted edge. My friend slept in my bed for weeks, And then my brother for a single night with his knee in my back But I couldn’t complain. Because he slept soundly and didn’t mind the way my cat nestled between his legs. When he mentioned it in the morning, I tentatively mention the way she must’ve felt his unsung sorrow — how she seems to follow where comfort calls. I’m so far from any place I’ve ever called home, I know that this is the time people reinvent themselves but honestly I must admit I like the woman I’ve grown into. I’ve been tempted by the pain, the torture of the past to dispel any part of me any one might claim. But the truth is, When I wake up it is only I and none of them. I am only me. I wonder about th...

In the days of the end before it had arrived in its entirety I found a penny and took a picture of it balanced on the edge of my coke can I intended to send it but never did. Nothing and everything Just sitting there. Now months later, a penny a hawk in the sky the call of a distant place. I am always one to find a way out Crafting home in a metaphoric sense  Can’t lose it, that way.

 And with that final act  With what you’ve now done I can finally fully release you And thank god It’s easier than inhalation  Everything I thought I knew about you  A belief  And in writing this I find a sense of      .

I am reaching for a concept to convey what I’ve been meaning to say But it feels out of reach  And I say that truthfully Yet underneath it Is the heart of the matter which is — Well somewhere outside of me Edgar Allen Poe’s tell-tale beneath the floorboards calling out to me, The perpetual haunting. But find myself waiting with bated breath - for Gadot. And this is all just a literary workaround to avoid any true sincerity. Leaning on pomp and circumstance to avoid the trap door beneath the podium.  And really this is all just to say, I’ve been reaching for a concept Because it’s easier than reaching for any man I’ve ever loved And it’s easier to dress up my words and blame any lack of understanding on just lacking literary reference. This is all just to say, I’m afraid of my notebooks and ghosts pressed into the page even after it’s been ripped away. Even now Even here I can hear the beating of hearts that were once mine beneath the floorboards of each poem I traded Or is it ...

I ignore any gravitational pull  Dismiss it for physical proximity  Lending my mind to illusionary truth theory  There are no soul ties  Threads binding our pages together  Because the spine has been cracked and closed too many times  It’s all pulling apart  Like gravity

And may he never receive that type of love again  At the same time May I never extend it  Or accept anything that resembles this