Grief

I have come to know that grief

Is all consuming.

These last years have been thieves.

They did not come quiet,

Nor gentle,

Delivering blows in succession like

Grotesque dominoes

But I didn't want to play.

Now I am puppeteered by unstable emotions

That reemerge unbidden

Where simple undertakings

Become acts of war

Like clearing space of clutter feels

More akin to deleting memories

Which in turn feels like erasing

The space in time they occupied,

And scrolling through the past

Becomes the same as picking scabs.

Grieving is messy,

Tear tracks running into each other

Until you don't even know

What loss they fall for anymore

They just form a web

So one string plucked

Sends them all into a frenzy

And, just as a bug that's trapped is destined

I am left in the middle of it

A husk of what once was.