How to grieve when you cannot stand feeling anymore

she careens the sullen halls searching for a cry that has been struck out of existence

She calls in a flutter of tears that bellow as a warm baby’s swaddling song

When you swaddle your hands like an infant’s after the tightening in your mouth floats down into your chest

She has forged a secret bond like a secret relationship to something she never had

As Dickinson lamented of a liquor she never tasted but longed to have brewed

The name was ringing like a broken bell in my ear, splitting my brain like a broken clock that tells time too fast

I must never catch up

Her wailing for a bundle of something she cannot catch up with

The ashes that fell on the earth

Made the night careen upon her swollen body

She prayed, oh so deeply did she pray

To stop the bleeding, the deepest aching pressure that existed like molten cracks in her skin

She fell, cracking wide open

Exposure to elements that felt like a whole new world

To grieve for the first time after hating how much pain you’ve experienced

How sad it made you feel

I saw it in Anne’s eyes

I felt inside my own gaze

How to breathe when there is no air

It was only for naught

But it was everything even with the little things that swept away

everything, so deeply everything, everything that ended, that started, that became the existential part of just breathing

The soreness that never ends inside her heart like a broken bell that obliterates and obscures the soul’s flesh

Mapping out each and every loss

How to pray when God feels silent

Everything that means anything

It’s when she vanished into the stream of her blood that wished to create life

That she died, reborn into anguish that relieved into

Pray harder, cry harder, dream harder

“I can’t stand the cold color of death.

I long to taste the light that never shined.”