battle born

When grief comes talk to the foxes curl on the floor hit eyelids with fists.

Grief is a long dark table that calls for you to come to it alone.

Thief your heart into pieces.

Make music upon its wood over and over again

banging your hands upon it until the knuckles bleed and heal and bleed again and again.

The bleeding always comes last.

Grief is a long dark table that calls for you to come to it alone.

At one end is a skinny man.

There are mountains of food before him and he keeps and keeps eating. Before you know it the food is gone and he still hungers.

Thief your heart into pieces.

Place them on his plate. He will take the pieces gleefully blood on his cheeks chewing loudly.

Stare at him. Listen to him swallow hard.

When he is done he will eat the plate.

Start taking apart the table and feed it to him piece by broken piece. When the table is gone start peeling back the walls piling the plaster and wood before him. Do not separate the nails place them there as well. Break the window frames over your knees sweep the broken glass into his gaping mouth tear down the beams and up the floor. When the room is gone go to the next room and then the next one. Pull the whole house down to set before the appetite of the skinny man. Breathe hard and as if the pile were merely crumbs watch as he eats it all.

When there is nothing else nothing but the empty aching world watching the two of you and he still stares at you like the rocks below a darkened lighthouse his eyes

like blue china plates creaking under the strain like blue faces being held under the cold water

like headlights ready to swallow everything in its gaze making the darkness surrounding him even blacker

look around you