My grief and I go walking
together everywhere.
It’s curled up like a foetus
somewhere behind my breasts.
It’s not human.
It’s not animal, or plant.
It just is.
It’s a something I can’t describe,
because I can’t see it.
But I can feel it.
I feel it there almost always.
The moment I take my mind off
mundane matters like being alive,
and staying
alive,
there it is.
Sometimes it sleeps
but when it is awake
it is a palpable ache I can do nothing about.
A name, a song, a conversation, a smell.
Gothic words from Books I once loved.
An I Love You whispered in the margin of a dead boy's letter.
Or just numbers added up on a scrap of notepaper,
in the quavering script of an old man’s hand.
A feather.
A regret.
A memory.
All these things waken it.
Some tears, some sighs, some pain,
And then I am ready to soothe it to sleep and
try to ignore it again.
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