Journal of a Grief

The afternoon trickles,

dripping into the room.

Dust motes waltz

in strips of somber light.

Dresses hang in neat rows—

vibrant: blue, red, yellow—

but they are useless.

Nowhere to go,

no one to visit.

Cobwebs thread

the fan blades,

swaying with a faint rhythm.

Distant traffic

pricks the silence.

Even the light is alone.

It whispers:

Help.

I can't know if you breathe right now.

I can't hear your laughter this far away.

I love you—

therefore you have the power to hurt me.

This pain is a house no one else can enter,

its rooms locked,

its windows refusing light.

I wander it alone,

touching the walls as if they might answer.

I yearn for you so desperately,

but there is no language by which to tell you—

only silence,

stretching like a hallway that never ends.

I try desperately to remember you. 

Day by day, I am forgetting–

the sound of your voice,

how you'd wrap your arms around me, 

pulled me close 

when my world was in shambles. 

I do not stir 

from the tomb of my bed. 

Every object means nothing–

each one exists only for you.

But you are not here. 

Silence is a blanket, 

draped heavy on my shoulders. 

Even the chairs 

have lost their language.