Ash

The stain of the day
Is spread out in the sky like an old tarp
Held up in tented peaks with the hands of ancient buildings,
Their windows like tombstones and gaping smiles.

I find myself prostrate again
Before the crumbling altar of your life.
My arms spread like a nun, nose to the frigid floor,
To be drawn and quartered by grief and regret and if onlys.

The silent movie of your life is projected before me,
No orchestra or dubbing-in of voices.
Only the sound of the projector and its distorted film
Clicking away the wasted days with each frame.

I say my Mother words, the flagellating vows
Of self loathing and self hate and crucification,
And by the time I’ve reached the end of the script,
I look up to see that the evening sky has been reduced to ash,
Like your eyes.

Morning Routine

Each day begins the same. After the welcome relief of sleep, I open my eyes. And immediately the realization that you are gone forever backhands me across the face. Again the sting. Again the pain in my chest.
And I am there again. Starting the story of your life over in my mind.
I am sitting  on the front stoop of our apartment building with you in my lap...fitting perfectly in the crease of my long thin legs; your tiny head on my knees...your tiny feet on my soft, newly deflated belly.
You are wearing your little blue and white striped seersucker onsie with the sailboat on it. The sun turns your dark brown eyes a deep olive green. You are all mine. Someone to love....and to love me back.
I turn my head for a moment and squint toward the summer sun. I feel the warmth on my eyelids. Your tiny fingers are wrapped around my long smooth fingers.
I softly sing to you.
I tell you about all of the things we will do.
In that moment, the whole world fell away and it was just you and I.

Each day begins with that. My beautiful, beautiful Jonathan.

Voicemail

There are days, much like today, that I feel as if I have been gutted. I reach for the phone to leave you a message, to sing songs to you in your voicemail and I realize I will never again do that. Today I have spent hours in bed, trying to muster the strength to go to work tonight. I hear your voice telling me to get up. I stare at your pictures. I try to remember every little thing. I remember how you laughed your little baby laugh. I remember how you danced. I remember how you said that you forgave me for everything and how I never accepted your forgiveness.
Is it time now, Jonathan, to finally accept it? Because inside I am going to self destruct with guilt and shame.
I grieve for what could have been and what is.
The pain in the center of my chest...well, now I know what absolute heart break really is.

Expansion

 
 I am reading in the book, “Bearing the Unbearable,” that grief is a process of contraction and expansion. It says that is how we grow. I’m tired of growing. I just want you to come back. Or send a secret message that the ashes I received are only burnt wood. And that you are just in a witness protection program like in the movies.

     I finally took the kayak out. I thought that being in my happy place felt like I was somehow abandoning you. The day was extraordinary, much like you were. Billowy, bright, suprising, and a little bit scary. The wind was at my back on the way from the dock to my favorite place where the water lilies are now greenish-brown and sinking, but the trees around the cove were burning brightly in the early autumn sun. I saw a grey crane take flight over me and I felt your presence with me there as I quietly took in the natural order of things.
     To get back to the dock, the starting point, was tough with the wind working against me. I paddled harder, with the sun now warming my face; the cold water slapping at the cumbersome orange spectacle I was sitting on. I rowed past the dock quite a distance, only so I could drift back toward it and take in the light bouncing from ripple to ripple and the rustling red leaves and the open canopy of azure blue sky.
Jonathan, I sang to you, I sang softly to the sky; September Song. Did you hear it? Please say that you did.
Please say.

....and these few precious days,
I’ll spend with you...these precious days, 
I’ll spend with you.

Ghost

Dear Jonathan,

In the photo below is me before your funeral. I wore the shoes for you. I knew you would get it...my reason for wearing them. 

And Jonathan, I will try to love autumn again.

The Michigan air is cooling and the leaves are turning to flame. I have memories of walking with you amongst the fallen leaves; stopping along the way to bend to the earth and choose an extra specially colored one to take home to display...Our feet shuffling along the road. The sound of it is still in my ears.

And Jonathan I can’t go into the meat cooler at work anymore. I could before but I can’t now. For reasons I’m not sure I can articulate. It’s something about being there in the cold, around the flesh that is no longer animated, the  finality of it. I can’t explain it. Maybe because I was there with you in the cold for so long. Lying beside your naked body in a drawer  waiting to be warmed again and then released by  fire. 

Ashes to ashes.

Dust to dust.

Your body once existed inside my own.  
I pushed you out into the world.
The world consumed you.

I am just a ghost now, Jonathan. I can smile. I can even laugh.

But I am a ghost with my nose pressed against the glass of my former self. On the other side lives hope and renewal and a black and white photo of you and your siblings all together again at Christmas.
What do I do with that?

Bones

It’s 6. I’m sitting in the van after work. The alarm for my meds goes off. Mechanical. Methodical. That is how my days have become.

I wash the pill down with 2-day-old coffee sitting in the cup holder.

My eyes are sore and dry from always being so wet.

Acquaintances and friends come. They hold me throughout the day.

They say they are so sorry.

I say I am too.

I hold it all surface level. Like a glass full of water about to spill over. Surface tension.

Until I get safely to the van where I can cry loud and ugly and no one can hear it.

This grief is a voracious, rabid animal ripping you from my flesh.

Bone exposed.

I am a rack of bones moving through the world. 

I am teeth in a skull in the desert. An eternal grimace in the sand. 

Which is still more than you are now...black ash, wet with rain.

Stardust

We had a little secret, you and I, when you were tiny. 

When your father worked nights and the apartment was quiet and dark, I would put on my favorite Willie Nelson Album and slow dance with you, and sing softly in your ear.

Your tiny wisps of breath on my neck as you slept.

You were all mine. My first true love. The first real love of my life. I had no idea that my teenaged heart could hold so much.

I sang you to sleep.

And now you sleep forever.

I see you in my dreams, in some other place. Sometimes smiling at me, taking over the horizon with your light.

There is not a single second that isn’t consumed with the longing for you now.

For this all to be a dream.

For all the singing into your voicemail not to all be for naught...the letters begging you to please return to me somewhere in a landfill.

All day I put on a face to meet faces and after work I crash into you.

I scream your name into the wind as I drive home in the evening; relentless tears streaming down my face.

My stardust baby, it cannot be. Where have you gone?

.......sometimes I wonder why I spend, the lonely nights dreaming of a song;

The melody haunts my reverie ,and I am once again with you.....

https://youtu.be/Hf5UvKjCDUU