Before I can understand what I’ve lost, grief crushes me with awkward mumbles from well-wishers. It suffocates me under floral arrangements. It stuffs my mouth with funeral casseroles and cookies I can’t taste.
Then, there are the days I wake up on the bedroom floor, in the corner where he looked out the window, listening to the rain. The nights I apologize to his ghost for that last argument, begging him to come back. The empty breakfast nook chair.
The silence that once hid from college football games and late-night horror flicks. The dirty socks I toss in the trash.
All these shadows of who he was, who he wasn’t, how I failed to love him.
Crushed and mixed with anger, resentment, aloneness,
and sleepless nights.
published in The Wind Phone
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