On Being Eviscerated

i am trying to communicate to you the feeling of grief

i can tell you that we're roasting over god's firepit

and i am a stuck pig,

oozing oil everywhere

i can tell you that grief

is my cat pushing her paw out to be touched one last time through the bars of her carrier

and the sterile smell of euthanasia

i can tell you that grief

is the look on my father's face,

when he hears the word 'mother'

i can tell you that grief,

is when i catch my love enduring beyond existence

i want to grab you by the shoulders and direct you to a pit in the dirt and say, 'here, look, there is my grief. it's in this hole, right here.'

i want to show you

but grief is not a hole, or a sucking chest wound

grief is middling,

it is a piece of sidewalk with the water running through it

and thunder and lightning striking two miles away

i can tell you that grief

isn't all sadness

but more so,

absence