Study in Grief

  I have lived through sadness
  Deep and seemingly without end
  Pain clear and sharp
  As fluted crystal
  So much a part of me
  I put it on before rising
  After the one perfect moment of possibility
  Before waking erases the memory of your last act
  Before it slams into every pore

  I thought it endless
  When I couldn’t drive
  Without sobbing
  Couldn’t chew food
  Grinding nutrients into my body
  Couldn’t look in the mirror
  Without seeing your reflection
  Blotting out mine
  Couldn’t let myself
  Ease into routines
  The untouched take for granted 

  I have lived through anger
  White hot and hungry
  Searing every exchange
  Lashing out when kindness and sympathy
  Were offered
  Hating the sun’s audacity
  Wanting to enshroud myself
  In a dark rain of dying leaves

  I’ve had trouble with acceptance
  But like it or not
  It comes
  Tiptoeing around
  The barbed walls I’ve erected

  And one day
  It’s all gone
  And I shrivel
  With guilt
  For not remembering

  I keep your ashes
  And in August
  Call you back
  You don’t come as easily
  Perhaps because now I choose
  To live without your constant presence 

  And after 26 years
  August may finally 
  Just be another month

                        ---Katherine McLeod Searle
                                  20 July 2007   

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