Freeze your love for safe-keeping. Call it grief.
Let it burn when you pick it up and hold it too long. The wet on your hands– and the sting of it– will teach your brain to be afraid of the melting.
The melting burns.
The melting worries you because, how will you catch it all? What if you lose something in the transition?
You had to freeze it to protect it. You had to.
How do you protect something that waves and rolls? Something that runs and falls? Something that can be swallowed down?
You can’t, so you stop the time of it.
Freeze it safe.
Fill your hands with frozen until it bites.
Remember when it had no teeth?
Remember when it was all mirrors and depth. Something you could sink into. Something you sank into, time and time again.
Remember time.
She runs fast, even through the frozen. The sea could take her strides, but the glacier cracks.
Shave that corner down, and save it. Let it be liquid.
Better that than fall away. Better that, than cut you.
It is ocean, even when it is only one spoonful deep. Even when the rest is still shock-frozen-safe-kept.
Talk to it.
Notice how it does not hurt to hold it when you let it free of freeze.
Tell it the truth. The sad truth. The truth that makes your bones ache from the inside, the one that silenced your heart.
Tell it how it no longer has a proper bed. How the earth eroded around it. How you saved the whole of it, glaciered it safe.
Ask what it wants: to stay safe and whole, or to fold into your sea? Be honest. Say how it will lose its shape if you absorb it. How you will not be able to come to it, and just it, any longer. How it will blend into all love, into all you.
Watch as it sloshes in your spoon, craving waves, aching for movement at all costs.
Eventually, you will drink it as it wants to be drank. Your heart will sing again and you will not know whose song it is.
Did yours come back? Or is this how ice melodies when it returns to form?
Hold the rest, frozen, when you need the burn. Sing to it. Remember safe. Pretend you’ve outrun time.
And if it aches to stretch again, to splash again, melt your grief for more living. Call it love.
Take your time.
You can do this spoon by spoon.
.
.
Inspired by a conversation in my comments section with Lillian, a friend and a fellow Pepper: https://humaninrecovery.wordpress.com/
rarasaur 
For a little at a time use a tiny spoon, for a lot use a serving spoon or go straight to a measuring cup…
The imagery here bites just like the frozen memories I try to cling to.
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You could down a pitcher at a time if that works best for you. It’d take a lifetime to drink up an ocean either way. Thank you for reading. ❤
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“spoon by spoon” – good advice.
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A variation of the timeless advices– bite by bite, bird by bird, etc. ❤ Thank you for reading, VJ.
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My pleasure!
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Beautiful. Quite heartbreaking. Big hugs, lovely. 💚💚💚
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Big hugs right back. Thank you for your always-light. 🙂
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When I think of spoons and grief and frozen things I think of eating ice cream out of the container while crying in front of the tv… but this is a much more poetic way to connect those things. ❤
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Haha, true, but there’s a big poetic energy to a good icecream-tv-cry. 🙂
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THUD. ❤
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❤
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tears.love
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Much love back ❤
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beautiful
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Thank you 🙂 (also, I don’t know if you get notifications for follow and unfollows but sorry if I made that happen like 12 times. WordPress has been acting up and saying I’m not following people, and then when I click to follow– it says I unfollowed them, so I click again. It’s a whole thing, ha! 🙂 )
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Ha ha, don’t worry about it, mine glitches out all the time with likes, I like a post it auto-unlikes and then I have to like it again! This can happen over and over until I leave the site and go back in. 😀
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It’s so bizarre! I’ve never had it happen so I was wondering if it was StrokeBrain acting up… good to know it’s just a platform mood swing. 🙂
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You’ve captured something visceral with your magic spoon. I could feel the ice and fire.
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Oh. My. Wow. That’s a glorious way of describing the grieving process. Not sure what I said, but glad I said it. 🤗🥰
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“Remember when it had no teeth?”
This one line…..
Thud.
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Your courage, your endurance, the beauty of your writing, the laughter you share sometimes … These things are a source of strength to me right now when I need it. Thank you.
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