I’m sitting on a chair I assembled myself. My computer is sitting on a table I assembled myself. I’ve set hot coffee right next to it. The faith I have in this is undeserved, unbacked by history, but seems to be holding. Seven years ago, when I came home from prison, newly widowed, I ordered an office chair off the internet so I could comfortably … Continue reading 8. assembling grace
The last ring my husband made for me still fits. We lived in our car then.Outside the world,molded to core and bone. The ring sits differently now,slides only halfway downa finger so paddedit sometimes forgets what it’s made of. The ring never forgetswhere it came from. It fits now, a widow’s ring,always at half mast. Continue reading salute
I was a young teenager when a traveler told me that the flat mole above my belly button meant I would be a young widow. Back then, I didn’t imagine I would ever marry. Mamasaur calls moles like that beautymarks. Sometimes, on the days that grief chases me, I cover it with make up even though I would never wear anything where it would show. … Continue reading beauty marked
When folding the towels, I run my hands along the patterned grid. In the transition from a quiet grey to a louder grey, there is a row of loops of thread. Big circled loops cinched above small neat lines. They look like a series of twos. Happy birthday, baby, I say aloud, as I do every time I see 222 in the world. I didn’t … Continue reading 2/22/22
Grief is light, I tell myself in the middle of another sleepless night. Sometimes I try to keep myself grounded but it is impossible when you hold so much light, when you are so much lighter than air, so much lighter than light. I think I could float away. I think I could be a star– just look how my name has collapsed into a … Continue reading grief is
So often I love the blank page of a blog. I could write anything here. I could write: some plankton can make little clouds above their own heads when the sun is too bright. This is true. I could write: some people bring their rainclouds with them wherever they go. I am afraid of becoming this kind of person. This is metaphorically true, then just … Continue reading blank
I haven’t felt like myself since Kozo died. I wish this wasn’t true. He wouldn’t want that. I wish I was better at grief. I’ve had so much practice, and yet, here I sit: dimmed. At his memorial, I cried through my reading. I really thought I could make it all the way through, but I was talking about emptiness and fullness, and how life … Continue reading on grief-dimmed joys
Sometimes the road seems paved, but you still slip through. You leave a crack in the flooring and think, I’ll get to it, but then you don’t, and then time flaps its gargoyled wings and the crack becomes a pothole, and you fall in. Today, I fell in. I sobbed in my bathroom for awhile, watching my face contort into something truly mythical. The way … Continue reading the scream
rarasaur 