IN GRIEF
“In grief,” my friend starts to say and
Before he can finish the sentence
My mind hears “in Grief” as if he’s just
Returned from some foreign country.
What kind of flags do they wave there?
I picture badges, passports, coats worn
Or not. The slender sleeves of parasols.
How do houses stack together in Grief?
The streets seem as clean as aisles
In a dead facility. The kind of place
That suggests something worse than
The routine means of human decay.
Drawers full of blue exotic butterflies.
Obsolete manuals in perfect type
Replete with broken cheats and codes
For long since vanished machines.
In Grief, there are no citizens exactly.
It is a republic without borders.
The roads are unpaved. Through a sidewalk,
Weeds offer their dry salute.
In Grief, you often feel someone standing
Beside you. And sometimes someone is.
Friend or stranger, bleeding and bending
In the shape of something made of words.
Others harp over yesterday’s newspaper.
They see the same headline from
Forever ago. They hang in the balance
Between promise and neglect on tiny hills.
The sun shines, pleasantly, as if a headache.
Meanwhile I walk through streets flowing
Along hypothetical avenues all day.
I come upon a field of stones and nothing else.
In the distance, someone dots their hair.
Someone sides wide-eyed in a perfect square.
Someone holds a chicory comb and scrapes
The surface of their sex with a finger.
The courtyards of Grief are quite lovely, though.
Even mediocre flowers smell miraculous.
The light is vegetative, dry, which is nice.
And so I make my way toward a small thin house.
I nod to the neighbor and realize you live here.
Inside an open doorway, where shadows stretch
Across a carpet. Where a bowl of rocks sits
Waiting. I hear footfall. I imagine you in white.
Music plays lightly like the language of lovers.
The bitter taste of time bothers no one now.
It’s kind of you to come so far, my love, to greet me.
To keep this place we built together, centuries ago.
In Grief, you almost appear with those same
Missing eyes, in all places, here, in a pose
I know by heart. No matter what happens
We are here. For in Grief, we are always here.
—The Friend