the beauty of grief

No one knows she cried her eyes out three days ago,
sat in her desk chair and wept, unable to see the screen.
No one knows how harshly she spoke to herself, flagellated
her already fragile spirit, lay on her bed with her forearms
pinching her eyelids flat, and made mad proclamations
against her weak, fractured heart. No one knows the hours
she’s devoted to circling her sadness like a vulture,
the mileage she’s worn into her soles, walking the hills of her city
in a series of unsuccessful attempts at forgetting.
No one heard the keening in the shower, or the thudding
of her fists against the dashboard. No one saw
the resignation of her shoulder blades against the back door,
or her palms curling under the kitchen faucet as hot water
eviscerated the dishes, or the half-moons of mascara
threatening stains on the duvet and her favorite t-shirt.
There are no witnesses to the indentation
her back made on the couch, reeling from the storm,
no audience for the unsent letters pleading her cause, no bleacher
of cheerleaders as she made herself breakfast, in spite of the great effort
it took to crack eggs, spread hard butter on thin toast.
No one knelt before her dabbing a cold cloth on her forehead,
or fed her spoonfuls of oatmeal, or kneaded the soft
tissue of her lower back as she bent, again and again,
to heave trouble out of her way.

She had convinced herself of her own ruin,
a fault line splitting her body in two.
Her lungs felt as thin as moth wings,
and she was certain her bones had been worn brittle,
stilts of a house helpless against a hurricane.

But this is the beauty of grief.

What she saw in the mirror was not
the deep ravine left by loss,
The war she was waging
had not hollowed her cheeks or made an anarchy
of her skin. Her lips had not unpinked from slaughter.

Instead, a pliancy and sheen had birthed from the rubble.
The eyes looking back at her were bright as promises
and it wasn’t the overhead light or the sudden April sun.
Grief had lifted the rawness out of her,
clutched at the throat of her darkness and pulled
until it lay silent and sleeping at her feet,
a feral dog fed and full,
and what was left was neither muscle nor wound
but horizon line, a ripe nothingness
some fresh story beginning,
etching her face clean.

unpublished work

The hibiscus needs a poem,
the grasshopper too – he looked so unbearably vulnerable
in the middle of that island road.
Low tide deserves a poem about
the importance of retreat, and the woman
who rang up the groceries was carrying a poem
about loss, eyebrows pinching when she gave me the receipt.
The two boys at the playground, see-sawing themselves into a fight,
need a poem in which war is given a long set of parables
from childhood. Breakfast is ripe with poetry, the tangle of mango
and omelet and limbs of sausage and the exclamation point
the raspberry jam makes against the tongue.
Laurie needs a poem, the sweat on her obliques
midway through the workout video, the primitive grunt
at the home stretch, and how peaceful she looks
with that second cup of coffee.
The flight over the Pacific is brimming with metaphor,
the incongruities of small window and vast sky and the glass
barring one from the other. Eli’s laughter is begging
for a poem, the universe of hope it carries with it
and how the tuck of his palm crossing a busy street
delivers an almost excruciating joy. Rain
is ruthless with poetry, that great cleansing of history.
The canyon trail could use a verse or two,
its wildness gentrified by the cellophane wraps
of cigarette packs and tennis balls abandoned
in thickets by dogs weary of the search.
The piano needs a poem, that Mozart duet
unplayed for three decades still poised
somewhere at the edge of the edge of fingertips.
The golf course wouldn’t think to ask
but it needs a poem, too, its green hips flirting
with a ceaseless manicure, the strange marriage
it makes of fact and fiction. The highway
craves a poem, Route 2 carving an additional solitude
from northern Montana, the wearying stretch of the Panhandle,
towns on the brink of disappearance, and dust
heavy on the windshield. A poem lies in this living room,
vacation magazines and sunscreen sharing real estate
with a notebook and a pen that may run out at any moment.
And so the poet, too, needs a poem, to remind herself
of the unpublished work, life waking to its first pulse,
body rising toward inklings of light,
the heart stirring itself open, already knowing
it will break.