A collection of pieces about loss or grief that speaks to me as a mother whose children didn't survive.
Quarantine by ikazon, literature
Literature
Quarantine
Leaves flood storm drains and gutters like former lovers retreating to the sea, leaves crowning every street crossing like crinkled blindfolds, former lovers retreating to see themselves as they were, once, eyes closed scattered along the landscape like storms my grandfather died last week appearing nonchalant, leaves in drains supplanting rain retreating to the sea, landscape scattered, storms of barren trees bearing air and isolation but what do trees know of grief, leaves flood sidewalks like strangers who know better than to be out this year, disposable masks scattered along the landscape as the viewing is today storms send pedestrians scrambling inside, shoes scraping against leaves like strangers searching for good news in their own reflections for lack of places to look amateur reporters sorting through the same four stories to share the most palatable the funeral is tomorrow words they can find among the trees, but what do trees know about grief except that more leaves
It's been four years by comatose-comet, literature
Literature
It's been four years
When you died, the world did not end.
the tectonics did not collide and crumple upwards
leaving the continents a messy patchwork with mountain
ranges for crooked spines. The oceans did not evaporate
swelling in a heavy July sky, bursting in the wildest of summer
storms, hurricanes ripping through seaside towns like howling
ghosts, looking for someone no longer there. The winds did not
mourn in a wailing chorus, the lightning did not keep striking your
grave, pounding down with angry fists and a desperation that if it
hits hard enough, you will open the ground up and beat back with
thunderclap hands. Plagues did not fester and wars did not r
God traces the letters on tombstones, fondly
remembering the deceased’s first steps
into His house. When He closed
the gates of Eden, the whole world
became a cemetery: the untouched garden
a hospital waiting room, overflowing
with flowers to be arranged
upon funeral wreaths, waiting for Him
to bestow His last gift.
When I die, remember
the pines, our love is evergreen
and while my heart will rot,
your memory of it roaring against your ear
will not.
When I die, I will come back
as a bluebottle fly, humming a
lullaby in the nights you cannot find sleep
just like my breathing once did, and I will
crash into your windows over and over,
pounding out ‘I love you’ in morse code,
telling you to open the windows and
breathe easy, I am here.
When I die, I will linger in the gaps
between your fingers, those canyons
you once thought only I could bridge,
but I will camp in those gorges and wait
for my camp-fire to be extinguished by another
man’