Grieving

Rivers rounding stones, your memory barbing my eyes, the last moment

at the hospital clinging to air

beaded with monsoon rain at the windows

your breath like prints fading

the mist of you alive.

Sunny-side-up-years glistening on us.

Togetherness is so fragile. For dinner

I eat scrambled nights shoving them around

the plate of solitude. Good you’ll never know

hunger now. At the mountain retreat last month they taught me to let go.

Don’t destroy your body, they said. I dropped my gaze to my knuckles

felt the icy wind’s rasping ire. Don’t I know how short patience is with grief?

My flight back home in a rain drenched craft, bobbing and heaving

like months of the year, finally landing into

a golden afternoon. The weight on my face

responding to light. Fleeing like everything

I’d ever held. Grief, a pleasant friend

sheepish for always knocking.

Which of my bones lets it in?

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