None Other As Lovely

I've been carrying the grief around like a forgotten backpack. 

Photo by Lisa Fotios

I carry it in my shoulders and my arms, in my back, and in my neck. I carry it in the way my body curls into itself the minute I let it rest. 

And I can't pretend to understand it. It's been a year and it's no less senseless. It's been a year and the wounds still cut deep, buried beneath scar tissue and concealer, beneath today's problems and tomorrow's disasters. 

It's crouched in the shouts of a cat at midnight, in the way I've let my house go since I last saw you, in the pit of my stomach and the disappointment I pretend not to feel. 

It lives on in the voiceless screams that I never knew existed. In the tears that never welled up. In my shadow, in my echo, in the footsteps that erase themselves before they can come to be. 

I don't want it. All I want is the light back. To ask for so little, and not be denied. For the language we never needed to exchange. For the love we did exchange without ever putting a price on it.

I know it's just going to be the shadows for a while because you're broken and now you can't be put back together. I know the guilt is here to lurk because I can never be sure if my fingerprints are all over the shattered pieces of you. 

I know I can't bear to look at myself anymore. Because for a brief moment in time, I began to believe I could live again. And now here I am again, with naught but the taste of ashes to keep me company.