growth – Accepting This

February 8th, 2022

It’s as if my thoughts are bound up by the fear of permanence
The idea that if I acknowledge the weight of today
It will sink me into a pool of brutal reality
Where the water turns to ink,
turns to sludge and before I know it
The air that I’m breathing will
morph into a textured sorrow
That resembles something like
quick sand, like a bad nightmare
I could be overcome,
overcome by every emotion that has
been woven through out each of these
365 days with out you on earth

Everyone experiences grief differently
but I believe there are some similarities
like how the phrase
“It comes in waves”
seems to ring true for anyone who
has lost someone that they love deeply

For me,
the waves are still here
Your sister said that
she lives with a lump in her throat
and that is truly what it is like
going on everyday in this place where
we can’t see you

I am torn between reflection and movement
I want to remember you,
to watch videos of you
to listen to your voice and
find photographs that I never knew existed
Want to bring up your name so often
because the truth is that the basis of my being was
built right beside you
My first encounters with joy, adventure, sadness, and concern
were experienced with you
All that which makes this life worth living
are seemingly wrapped up in stories where
you are the main character
the protagonist, the embodiment of vitality
and the ruler in which I measure nearly
every relationship

And then there is movement,
this constant need to keep on going because if
I remain in reflection or even visit it at all
there is the threat that I won’t be able
to continue on, I am working to reconcile
the presence of your spirit and the
absence of your body

The weight of today is like the
weight of the year
It is too much to hold
so I let it scatter,
diffuse into the pockets of time
where I can be still and know
that this Story is still good
It is just drastically different than the one that I wish to read,
It is desperately different than the one that I would’ve written

A year ago today,
I was looking at the ocean for the last time
that I would see it with the part of me that
you took with you in your death
Yesterday, I looked at that same ocean
eyes searching the waves with a hope of
reclaiming fullness
And a simultaneous desire to lose
the rest of myself
All that I know is that
all that is left is what has always been
The only thing worth anything
to love and to be loved
to find rest in the impossibility
The assurance that death leads to life
time and time again

The waves are still here
They are angry and crashing,
cyclical and comforting,
weeping and restoring,
Always seemingly surrendering
I will learn from them
I must learn from them

love and admiration are two very different things,
their coexistence is not rare but it is distinct.
I admire the way you allow your father to speak to you,
even when each word strikes a nerve and resembles
the early mornings, walking to school,
when you would toss a mold covered english
muffin into the trees behind his town home.

love and admiration are divided
when care taking becomes a heavy burden,
like a sack of flour on a slaves shoulders –
he bears it, but it’s ability to become something more
will never be his to take and enjoy

I love you when your hands are too heavy to lift,
and the nurses outside the door are aggravated because
you’ve fumbled over the help button on your
life line remote hanging on the plastic bars of your bedside
one too many times

I love you with each forkful of store bought chocolate cake
that I lift to your mouth, and I pray
that your tongue would bring you life
That your tastebuds would ignite
the memories of when I admired you,
and fed you every evening after work
and fed you dessert, when you could use your own hands with out help

I admire you when you walk me through crowded hallways
and bustling kitchens, through laundry rooms and
construction sites, and lead me to the elevator to send
me on my way

Love is not circumstantial
it does not ride on actions,
or hinge onto emotion
Love outlasts and outlives admiration

Although admiration means the world
It means lighting up because someone else is brighter
It is selfless in it’s wholeness and although often temporary,
it is sweet and seemingly taken for granted

I am living in a state of admiration – or at least attempting to be,
I’ve got this new kind of emptiness beginning to grow within me
distance has put into perspective the most important parts
of my existence, but I’m trying to admire it –
I’m trying not to ache for what used to be,
I’m trying not to be anxious for what has yet to come,
I’m trying not to let any days go to waste

but sometimes all of my trying leads to an organized chaos
my efforts will never be enough to keep
a steady distance from slight implosion

When you’re angry, I love you
when you are cooking in the kitchen with a towel slung over your shoulder
and humming along to duke ellington, I admire you

When you’re leaning forward on a wicker chair,
speaking to me of your greatest memory
in your most sad time, while you twirl your
golden hair glimmering in the fluorescent porch light
I love you, I admire you

You are here one day, and might be gone the next
but so am I, we’re like the wind and the mist, and
all things that come and go

You are here always, and when your body goes
your thought will stay
I don’t think I will ever wake up to remember,
that in each new day my heart will again break

A love poem for the empty days,
for the waiting, and for the many faces and
souls existing in another soul’s world
I love you, I admire you

Tag Archives: growth

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