Grief

By T

Grief is love’s shadow,

not absence but overflow.

all the words, all the warmth,

all the tenderness

that still lives in me,

with nowhere else to go.

It haunts me,

rips me open,

and when I reach for you,

I come back with nothing but

dust and bone.

Nowhere.

So it turns inward.

It claws, it claws, it claws

scratches the inside of my skull,

pounds against the cage of my

ribs.

It claws through my ribs from the

inside,

splintering bone,

your name poisoning marrow,

consuming everything it touches

There is no release,

only the echo of a prayer unanswered,

only the sound of a door

slammed forever shut.

This love claws at walls,

pounds its fists against silence,

and the silence always wins.

It drips down my bones

like acid,

burns through the tender parts of me

that once bloomed for you.

It is love that once had a home…

a body, a voice,

a warmth to pour itself into.

Now it drips from me like blood

with no wound to close,

just an endless spilling.

Every heartbeat is a wound reopening,

every breath tastes of absence.

I carry you like a curse;

your shadow stitched into my skin,

your silence a knife lodged in my lungs.

Grief is love…

no, not love, not anymore,

a carcass of it,

still twitching, still bleeding,

still screaming your name through my bones.

I carry it like a corpse strapped to my back,

the weight of devotion rotting,

sweetness curdling into stench.

Love was never meant to sit this long

in the dark,

it ferments,

it festers,

it turns on me.

So I cradle it,

this restless love,

in the empty space you left behind.

It aches, it burns, it softens;

proof that you were here,

proof that you were mine.

You are gone,

but the love stays,

It’s a weight,

a ruin,

a devotion turned into ash,

all this love

with nowhere to go

but back into my own broken ribs.

It spills from my chest in silence,

lingers in the hollows of rooms,

an echo searching

for the voice it once belonged to.

By T