It could also be true, that you learned to cope by not letting the pain subside, so as to not be unprepared for when it arrives again, with it’s bags, with it’s hat, with it’s half smile, and every intention of overstaying it’s welcome. It makes sense that you might be too afraid of getting used to peace, too uncomfortable with it, too anxious that you might forget how to ready your home for it when it shows up unannounced, in the way that it does. So instead, maybe you consistently self generate a little page, so that you never forget how it moves, so that you can keep your eye on it, so that when the knock at your door inevitable comes, you can bring your tired body to it and say, “I am as you left me, come in.”

And when I turned to face grief, I saw that it was just love in a heavy coat.

"I sit with my grief. I mother it. I hold its small, hot hand. I don’t say, shhh. I don’t say, it is okay. I wait until it is done having feelings. Then we stand and we go wash the dishes. We crack open bedroom doors, step over the creaks, and kiss the children. We are sore from this grief, like we’ve returned from a run, like we are training for a marathon. I’m with you all the way, says my grief, whispering, and then we splash our face with water and stretch, one big shadow and one small."

I never tried to be anything other than a dreamer. I never paid any attention to people who told me to go out and live. I belonged always to whatever was far from me and to whatever I could never be. Anything that was not mine, however base, always seemed to be full of poetry. I only ever desired what was beyond my imaginings.

i am no longer embarrassed / but i am devastated i am shattered by this body

A febrile astral sadness seizes me, / inflames my bones with a chill.

I sit bent, bowed, aged. I sit reading as if you were watching me, and I love you and want you to love me.

Who do you love? You were driving toward something and then, well, then you found yourself driving the other way.