A Letter to Grief
- Jul 25, 2025
- 2 min read
Penned in my dreams. Published on the blog
What are tears? Shed skin? Shed sweat? Deferred love?
DMT, the paint palate of my dream, release me into
memory, so I may relive again and again.
Wings, deplumed but firm, spread into the astral realm
where I may feel vibrations again and again.
God, reflection of I 'n I, breathe so that I may breathe
for others to see me without Wings or DMT.
Under layers: bright-red nose, thick curved lips,
ephemeral melanin, six feet from the ground,
six feet into the sky, your smile melts from this
view. Under skull: words float, syllables stutter,
metronomes swing, eternal interviews, doubt.
Somedays I walk in the shoes of the young woman
who denied me entry to see my mother in our last
conscious moment we shared. Yellow dashes run
between four lanes. Two headed North. Two headed
South. Follow the line. Avoid head-ons. Live more.
Somedays I bow my head when I see a man sleeping
in the corner of the same storefront. Packaged mango
and a liter of water, I can spare that for now. He asks
me to pray. In that moment, we exchange a gift,
leaving with a bountiful plunder, defying ordinances.
There is no heaven.
Only a young boy driving around an SUV
picking up souls adrift in exchange for
the coins in their pockets at the time
of their departure.
There is no heaven.
Only divine math that splits atoms in two,
ruptures genetics and generations,
says the atmosphere and two-headed
iguanas.
There is no heaven.
Only apologies that live in your throat
asphyxiated by festering I love you's.
Gratitude and mercy underneath the
thumb's print, grooves that hold secrets.
Hell?
Want to know what hell is?
Let's descend.
Put down your phone. Stop your thought.
Forget, for it is all we do. Silence. One
cannot reach but God's hand can. Before
exile anyway, the temperament of those
severed from their blood made it that way. Illuminated by Dante's dream and echoed
by Gehenna's screams. Under here, we all
cease. A lake dried, bare.
Let us rise.
Higher. Through cobalt, coal.
Higher. Through uprooted forests.
Higher, still! Through black holes darkening the sun.
Is this heaven?
Is it?
My voice in your voice reading my words, now yours.
Is it?
You can hear me, picture me. Release me into
your imagination, so I may investigate some more.
Is it?
We are now one. It is complete. Reflection reflects
as the Sun and Moon tether our existence to cyclical
days subject to sunburns and playful tides, say the moon.
Join me.
In both hands, I hide the ruins of Uruk. Sediment of the first
burial lives underneath my fingernails. Aramaic verses
repeat inside these consonants. Doubt clouds a terrarium
I sit in the corner of my room. Find me sitting, listening to the
grooves of my fingerprint under a record player.
Breath fills my life for I choose
to live.
Death follows along today and
tomorrow.
Say hello. I'm living the past, writing the future, present in the sentence.
