Beauty

She was beauty. She was everything beauty could be and encompass. She's ash now. I handle that every day. It bites at my throat. Sears my esophagus. My eyes ... tired and bereft you'd think they'd be empty of tears by now, but no. They forever pool and crash with the tide. Her tide. Her island. A distant photograph.

She’s a rainbow and I am a difficult man.

I miss you every single day. But today I try to smile. And remember all the good.

But you can skyrocket away from me, and never come back if you find another galaxy, far from here, with more room to fly, just leave me your stardust to remember you by.

Conspiracies

I make up conspiracy theories now. That you can’t be gone. You just can’t. You ran away. Away from me… sure, that happened too. But you only ran away. I sit and ponder what I did. Was I too clingy? Love too much? Or did you get caught again? Did you need to disappear? Did you think this was easier on me? …it’s not. My therapist would certainly agree with me there. A journal full of “Dear Jo,” would agree with me. The fact that I’m getting your skullflies on my legs. 

But you wouldn’t destroy me that way, and I know it. So you must be gone. And then it all comes back. It all comes back…

“Your heart is the most unreliable resource in your body right now.” 

Κύριε ελέησον.

Stunned

That’s what I was… Stunned. As I collapsed there in the laundry room, reading the texts come across my wrist “stay strong” … “her heart didn’t make it.” I wasn’t strong. How could I be? I sobbed “NO!” loudly and repeatedly for what felt like two hours but might have just been one. Nick came home in the middle and found me. Found me bawling “No, no, no, no!” And didn’t know what to do. I paused only long enough to tell him that you were gone. He seemed stunned, too. I couldn’t really take my mind off the repetitive “no”s long enough to notice for sure. 

Shell

I think about how I acquired all these things posthumously. Your blanket. I won’t sleep under my own covers because I bought the blanket Mike got for you… so I’d have my own, just like you. It’s been months and I haven’t slept IN my own bed, but ON. I can’t help it. Such a curious thing. This blanket. This blanket that never even touched you but somehow means so much to me. The things you bought that day… a zombie paci — never gets unwrapped. Stuffies stay in bed or neatly lined up never to be touched again. I got your silly unicorn… the one I bought for you. The one I nearly begged you not to love so much but you couldn’t help it. You loved it. So I bought it. What a lovely birthday we had that day. If only we had made it to another. I am hurdling toward mine and know no lovely box of cookies is coming my way. Nothing extraordinary will happen. Nothing extraordinary happens at all anymore. I’m living life as a shell of the person I once was. 

Numb Nonsense

I’m numb now. The wine has worked its fire through my belly. So numb I shouldn’t feel any pain and yet you linger on in my heart, mind, soul… Taking over once again in a cloud of pain so intense I feel immobilized and fearful that this pain is all I’ll ever know. That its swirling darkness will consume me and all I hold dear. That it will never turn off, Jo, never go away. I’ll never be whole without you because I don’t know how. And how cruel a world to live in where I can’t tell you how I carry you with me wherever I go. How much you mean to me still. How there’s hardly a moment to spare without you on my mind. How much I love you still though battered and beaten I may be by your loss.

Phantom Limb

My therapist compared grief to a phantom limb. That instead of feeding synapsis at a limb no longer there it mind feeds love and emotion out to a person no longer able to complete the connection. I like the metaphor. There’s a therapy technique called “grounding” in which you have to convince yourself the memory you’re experiencing is painful and kind of therefore serves no real good purpose, so your mind needs to move on. It’s hard. Grounding is hard. Mostly because the memories come pounding down like rain. I never got to say goodbye. She died too suddenly for any of that. But for that year and some months she was my person. I’m not trying to replace her because no one ever will. No one ever can. But maybe, just maybe, I can experience something. I’m broken but I’m working on it. 

Do me Luigi; all your friends know.

I dream the dead...

I dream the dead and wish you were in the faces. Wish you were in my memories when I wake. I recall you faintly one night. And something I dare not pen here.

It was the best dream I’ve had in a long time.

Your heart’s too big for your body.

That’s why it won’t fit inside.

You pour it out where everyone can see.

They call you cry baby.

I don’t feel broken,

I feel shattered.

I don’t need time,

I need a dustpan.