236/365

 

I didn't know

For sale signs on front lawns

could suck the breath from ones bones

 

I thought

I had done my letting go

in small increments of

grey strokes of paint

and cardboard boxes packed with

"clutter"

 

If home is where the heart is

What do you do

when you've poured your heart into a home?

And then its time to go

 

How do you gather the places

 where your boys drilled holes

into hardwood floors

took first steps

plugged toilets with pretend cars

 

Is it possible

to neatly box it all up?

firsts

and lasts

angry dents made from thrown chairs

the hurts and hurtmaking

the loves and lovemaking

 

I didn't know what I didn't know.

 



233/365

I don't know what else to say.

Today.

Magpie Grief

He stood in the middle of the road in front of me

The broken body of his love

in a pile of black and white feathers

on the gravel side

As bold as a magpie always is,

Letting me choose if he should live or die

in his corvid grief

 

I was struck once again

at the many faces of grief

 

The big man that stood in my office

filling the space behind his dark sunglasses with tears

the quivering hairs on his mustache betraying him

 

The mother with birdlike bones

that I hugged too hard, forgetting how raw a body feels

with a soul stripped bare

 

The deep vat of silence that we dip into

Jars of ashes left in cupboards

Cold bodies left stiff in morgues,

as if to pretend that death can somehow be controlled

 

And so I aimed my wheels to pass over him

Spoke to him in the space of my car as if he could hear me

that it was not my place to choose for him

between life or death

and over I went

 

After the wind had stopped ruffling his iridescent feathers

and I was able to catch my breath once more

Away he flew

 



223/365

 

And there will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears. 

And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears. 

 Get over your hill and see what you find there,

With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.
-Mumford & Sons