I remember, I must

I remember the gold hair in your beard,
As the loss descends, much as I feared.
The eyes grandmother warned me to avoid
Have bored, into my heart, an endless void.

I remember how hair curled on your neck,
How, when you fought, a tiny spittle-speck,
Frothed, and formed strings, between your soft lips –
The void shifts. Tears threaten. My breath dips.

I haven’t eaten a mango this season –
Will strawberries hold you back for treason?
I would look for you when you’d gone too far,
How I would instruct you to drive the car,
I pick up the phone to wish you good night –
But you’ve kept your silence and killed this right.

I remember your leg‘s weight when we slept,
I remember the promises we kept.
I remember your warm hand holding mine,
Through each movie, every single time.

I remember you wiping my tears dry
And I wonder how you have let me cry…

The kids miss you. (Remember my daughter?)
They have passed for you, like dirty water.

I’m mad at you. I’m pining. I am lost.
If I’ve hurt you, is this truly the cost?
Because I loved the way you felt and thought,
I‘ll always remember, but you forgot.

Though, through this caravan of memory,
I‘ve seen us through paths you will never see,
You’ve forsaken me in a place I know,
Love will hold fast; but I must let you go.

Bier

Strange how lifting
A body in death,
Though wrecks my back,
Still leaves me with breath;

But stifling
a heart break
Stops all air
my lungs make.

Grief

It keeps threatening to consume me whole:

This dark night of my questionable soul.

Death, separation and heartbreak,

I dread to think of what else they take.

For now as the summer sun grows hot

And the very earth condemns our lot,

The fates conspire and repel all desire.

Mourning comes in the building of a pyre,

With rules and laws, medicines and food,

What should I beg for and to what good?

I cannot blame an evil eye, or sin,

For all this breaking and screaming within.

It seems hopeful to call it the forge of life

And believe in higher metaphors of strife.

I’d rather know less of grief than I must;

I’d rather seek anything else to trust.