Stages of Grief: A Triptych
Dedicated to my mother; I wear your sweet smile on my face every day
crinkles up like tissue
paper
Your bangs are long enough
to tangle with your
eyelashes
So watching you blink is like
watching a breeze stir
the curtains
White blonde as if washed
out by midday
sunlight
You pronounce all of your
T’s, hold onto your
R’s, and your voice
memos are accented
by the jingle of the
carabiner on your belt
loop
Your collarbones, one once
broken just like mine
Your hands, delicate, air-sign
fingers to match your
Gemini sun and rising
Your legs, too long to
straighten out when
we press our feet to
the ceiling above your
dorm bed
But just long enough that I
have to tip my head
back and stand on my
toes when I kiss you
These memories dance across
the dashboard on my
drive home from you
My cheeks are the windshield
and my tears are the
rain
I smear them away with my
palms as the wiper
blades vigorously
follow suit
And mourn our forty hours in
heaven
We dared not sleep during our
last night
But rather spent it with you
laying on top of me
Your ear to my heart and my
nails tracing
constellations on your
back
You go to your classes, laugh
with your friends,
enjoy the changing of
the seasons
But I don’t know if I’ll speak
to you again
You’re alive as ever, yet I’m
haunted by your
absence
spring, but I’ve made
it here before the last
of your petals have
fallen this year
I think you blossom early
because you’d far
outshine the other
trees if you waited for
them
Sometimes beautiful things
come and go too soon
Sometimes I feel like I’m
losing you all over
again
I missed you when you faded
from your bed in the
living room
Now I miss the memories I
had of you as they
fade, too
I hold up my handmade
Halloween costumes
and try to find you in
the aging hot glue
I go looking for you on the
trails where our
footprints lay side by
side nine years ago
I search for the pocket folder
I saved your “good
morning” and “Kate is
driving you to practice
today” notes
I don’t know how to talk
about you without
crying, so I skip both
Do the five stages of grief
include guilt?
How long is that phase
supposed to last?
Some days, the pain is akin to
the way your bark
scrapes my skin when
I sit with you
A rough but sweet reminder
that I’m surviving
Other days, it’s forgetting the
sound of your
lullabies
Or writing down the
questions I have for
you and storing them
in my closet next to
your ashes
When I visit you this time, I
find a small new shoot
pushing its way into
the world, its bud
tender and leathery
The skin on the palms of my
hands and the soles of
my feet just the same
of your pillowcases
You hadn’t planned to DIY
tie-dye them
You also hadn’t planned to
graduate high school
in your best friend’s
backyard
But there you were, turning
your tassel with your
principal on Zoom
So does it really matter
anyway?
You hadn’t planned to pay
You hadn’t planned to pay
house centipedes
creeping through the
gap between your wall
and floor
But all your best friends live
on the same block and
Gaby has a balcony
So we pin an empty La Croix
box over the hole in
our flimsy drywall
hallway and smoke
bowls of Wisconsin
weed twenty feet
above the isthmus
You hadn’t planned to move
your mattress from the
floor of a Madison
apartment to a bed
frame in the gay part
of Kansas
But now you’re listening to a
podcast on a porch
swing in Lawrence
and learning to love
vanilla
You hadn’t planned for abrupt
goodbyes, for life
without her, for
mourning the old you
and the older you and
someday this you
But you were forced to
stretch the boundaries
of your comfort zone,
shed your skin and
step into a new
version of yourself,
conquer the
discomfort of
loneliness and
estrangement from the
familiar
So maybe the messy,
never-ending battle
with grief is important
I wouldn’t wish it on my
worst enemy