BEE LB
seasickness
after Laurel Chen, after Gwendolyn Brooks
what is grief for if not to dampen. not to grey or blur
past recognition; more like a sponge dipped in paint thinner.
what was there is still there, just changed.
there is a wound on the back of my head, spreading.
an infection seeped in one of the days i left my body.
this could be a metaphor, but isn’t.
i haven’t reread the scripts i left for my body to follow.
somewhere, the memory is stored. let me tell you where
i am: a room bled gold, draped in light and shadow--
one nothing without the other. here i am, waiting
for truth to settle like a stone on water.
let us follow this metaphor down, past breath to the bottom
of whatever body is encasing. the stone, like truth, doesn’t settle
but breaks. changes medium. air, then water, then damp silt lining
the end. here we are, the stone, the truth, and us, waiting.
here, we can’t hear the truth above the rush of movement,
then stillness. what i believe should matter, but doesn’t always.
often, it’s cast to the wayside. tangled like so much netting,
so much lining, fishhooks mangled into one harmful body
of knots. trust is the line moving through it. trust is the skin
catching, the blood welling, then flowing. liquid meeting liquid
and drawing near what needs it. can we blame anything for claiming its need?
what about grief, and its need to spread, and ease?
can we feed it both? do we have room?
do we have time enough to become unafraid?
after Laurel Chen, after Gwendolyn Brooks
what is grief for if not to dampen. not to grey or blur
past recognition; more like a sponge dipped in paint thinner.
what was there is still there, just changed.
there is a wound on the back of my head, spreading.
an infection seeped in one of the days i left my body.
this could be a metaphor, but isn’t.
i haven’t reread the scripts i left for my body to follow.
somewhere, the memory is stored. let me tell you where
i am: a room bled gold, draped in light and shadow--
one nothing without the other. here i am, waiting
for truth to settle like a stone on water.
let us follow this metaphor down, past breath to the bottom
of whatever body is encasing. the stone, like truth, doesn’t settle
but breaks. changes medium. air, then water, then damp silt lining
the end. here we are, the stone, the truth, and us, waiting.
here, we can’t hear the truth above the rush of movement,
then stillness. what i believe should matter, but doesn’t always.
often, it’s cast to the wayside. tangled like so much netting,
so much lining, fishhooks mangled into one harmful body
of knots. trust is the line moving through it. trust is the skin
catching, the blood welling, then flowing. liquid meeting liquid
and drawing near what needs it. can we blame anything for claiming its need?
what about grief, and its need to spread, and ease?
can we feed it both? do we have room?
do we have time enough to become unafraid?
--
BEE LB is an array of letters, bound to impulse; a writer creating delicate connections. they have called any number of places home; currently, a single yellow wall in Michigan. they have been published in FOLIO, Figure 1, The Offing, and Harpur Palate, among others.
BEE LB is an array of letters, bound to impulse; a writer creating delicate connections. they have called any number of places home; currently, a single yellow wall in Michigan. they have been published in FOLIO, Figure 1, The Offing, and Harpur Palate, among others.