In My Head Again...

(a grief poem for everyone who's lost someone and gained a conversational centerpiece)

She died.
And now she lives
in a beach-themed urn
on my fireplace mantle
like some kind of coastal décor
with emotional consequences.

I’m still dramatic.

Wondering if wherever she is,

her eyes are still rolling at me.

Telling dead mom jokes

because if I cry too hard,

I’ll never stop.

And she’d hate that.

She always said I was her angel.
Which is rich, considering
she got the fast pass to heaven
and left me here
with memories, grief, and
her favorite songs I can barely make it through.

Some days I talk to the urn
like she might sass me back.
Other days, I stare at it
wondering how a whole person
can fit inside something
that matches a beach bathroom aesthetic.

She’s in the urn.

I’m in my feels.

And somehow,

we’re both exactly where she said we’d be—

me being strong,

and her being proud.

(for Sutton & Xander)

she was all sunlight

and he was taught

to flinch from warmth.

she asked him how he felt

and he asked her

how to survive it.

he told her

love was a leash,

and she handed him a key.

he didn’t trust fate—

not after what it stole—

but she made him believe

in choice again.

not the kind that hurts.

not the kind that leaves.

the kind that stays,

even when it’s hard.

especially when it’s hard.

he tried to run,

and she didn’t beg.

she waited,

and he came back

because for once,

he wanted to.

nobody warned me

that peace would feel like grief

when all i’d ever known

was chaos with a pretty face.

nobody told me

that love could sound like

“text me when you get home”

instead of

“prove that you’re worth staying for.”

he doesn’t play games.

and that’s the hardest part.

because i don’t know how to be chosen

without auditioning for it.

sometimes i miss the ache

because at least the ache

felt like movement.

this?

this feels like sitting still.

like breathing.

like healing.

like i don’t have to earn it.

and i still flinch.

at soft hands.

at steady voices.

at mornings that don't burn.

but he never asks me to be easy.

just real.

and loved.

and here.

and i think

maybe

this is the kind

i get to stay for.

She never broke the rules.

But she kept them folded in her pocket,

just in case she wanted to.

She walked with grace,

but you should’ve seen the way her mind ran

in bare feet, in the dark,

through forests no one else dared enter.

She knew the weight of a secret,

the sweetness of an almost,

and how to balance fire on her tongue

without swallowing it.

Everyone said she was good.

She smiled like that was the whole story.

But she had rooms inside her

where she kept the almost-kisses,

the not-quite texts,

the names she never spoke but never forgot.

She never wrecked the house—

but God, she knew how.

She was temptation’s favorite regret,

desire’s cleanest line.

The girl who didn’t choose the wrong thing,

because she didn’t have to.

She was the wrong thing.

And the right one.

And the storm that watched itself pass.

I learned to speak in lowercase
because you flinched when I spoke in bold.
You called me annoying
and I swallowed that word whole—
let it ferment in the soft of my chest
until it turned into silence.

You laughed when I was loud,
but not the right kind of loud.
Not popular girl loud, not main character loud.
I was background noise
in a classroom where
you wanted music, not static.

I was a frequency
you didn’t know how to tune into.

But here's what you didn't see:
My mind moved fast.
Faster than my mouth could catch up.
So when I spoke too much,
it was because my thoughts were sprinting
and I didn't want to leave them behind.

You called me weird
because I noticed too much.
The way the teacher's hands trembled
when she passed back tests.
The crack in your voice
when you said you were "fine."
The truth behind things
people wished I hadn’t seen.

I used to shrink myself to fit
into your lukewarm approval,
until I realized
you were just uncomfortable
with anything not lukewarm.

I am fire.
Not for burning, but for forging.
And you—
you were water trying to put me out
because no one ever taught you
how to sit in heat without boiling.

So to the ones who called me too much,
too loud, too dramatic, too intense:
Maybe I was.
But I was also alive.
And that scared the hell out of you.

I’m not sorry for being flame.
I’m just sorry you never learned to warm your hands.

To the loud women

I come from women who talk over thunder,
who plant dreams in cracked concrete
and call it a garden.

I was raised in the echo of perfume and ashtrays,
manifest journals and unfinished laundry,
where love was loud,
and silence was never quiet.

I’ve been told I’m too much,
by people who mistook light for fire.
But I burn like memory.
And I glow like guilt.

Sometimes, I live in fiction
because it listens back.
Because paper doesn’t flinch
when you confess you’re tired
of being the strong one.

There are days I wake up mid-sentence
from a conversation I never started,
and grief is sitting at the edge of my bed
wearing my mother’s favorite shirt.

She left me her voice —
not her sound, but her saying.
The way she claimed pride like property.
The way she looked at me and said,
“That’s mine. I made that.”

And she did.

And I am.

And some days I remember
I am allowed to be unmade, too.
To crack.
To stall.
To rest in the middle of the story.

I come from women who carried everything,
so I learned to unpack nothing.

But I am learning now.

Learning that the load was never shame.
It was proof.

Proof that I loved,
that I was here,
and that even in stillness —
I go on.