drowning (for all the wrong reasons)

they told me that grief would feel

crushing

all the stories and books

the poems and the songs, they all lied.

it’s not crushing.

i’m not drowning.

instead i’m dreaming about you

and waking up and remembering

and falling back asleep to better dreams.

instead i’m watching her suffer-

your daughter

my mother

hurting more than i do because you’re gone.

instead it’s “how are you doing?”

and they think i lie when i’m “fine.”

just

“fine.”

(there’s nothing else to say.)

i think i grieved before you left, years before, perhaps.

nine years old, i knew you’d be gone eventually.

nothing’s made to last.

some things are even made with the purpose of falling apart:

glowsticks,

piñatas,

handwarmers,

and humans.

“look, a butterfly.”

is it you?

i don’t know if i believe it

but i don’t not believe it either.

sometimes i think

that something went wrong

that i might be messed up

because i can’t seem to feel.

but i remember sobbing on the bathroom floor

in a place that was too in-between to be real.

in a place that was not life

nor death

an unmemorable place

because the stench of mourning overpowered the scent of

clean linen

of pills

and of bleach.

i sobbed there

and i sobbed on the side of a road

back pressed against the outside of a car

tainting the song

and the place

with my memories.

i remember the first time i saw you

but the memory is tarnished

like silver

with time.

the airport seat was uncomfortable, and i wanted to leave

not sure why i was there in the first place.

i didn’t remember you when i saw you

though i’d met you before

it had been too long in the mind of a two-year-old,

too long to remember.

and i remember the last time i saw you

but it wasn’t really you.

you,

with your skin the same pale colorless color as your hair

you,

with your breath too raspy to ignore

you,

not sure if i was there or not.

the real last time i saw you-

it must have been that day

when we sat on plastic chairs,

and you in an armchair

the blanket we gave you tucked around your ankles.

it’s the last good memory i have of you, i guess.