It was all yesterday.
The strength of bearing,
kindness of touch, and
shoulders that kept
my life upright and moving
are too frail for even
a last embrace.
-for my cousin
It was all yesterday.
The strength of bearing,
kindness of touch, and
shoulders that kept
my life upright and moving
are too frail for even
a last embrace.
-for my cousin
Captured here
in the breath
curled
under my fingers
is all I could
hold, all
of you I could
save.
So many years of hurricanes
and earthquakes, tornados that rip
through minds and souls and aliveness.
How is it able to still thrash blindly
through our bloodstreams;
grind into destruction
every heart it touches.
How can I miss a
sea rushing wildly from shore
or words never said
How many ways are there to say,
to be gauche.
Today I will probably hit them all. Today,
all these years later, I am once again
angry with you.
Oh, I know, and you know,
that doesn’t change the love
or the grief,
that if anything it adds to
the personal guilt. But we need you.
Here.
Now.
But you’re still gone.
As completely and as foolishly as ever,
and it is just as when being without you was new and difficult to navigate,
a struggle to walk beyond.
See, I am still stumbling and tripping.
And you aren’t there to help catch…
any of us.
It is hard to know
which to remember, but clear
whom to weep over.