If grief has a mask,
then I am its wearer,
It is the plate I eat from,
The fork I used to place in my mouth,
Grief is the food I intake,
and excrete,
The battles I choose to fight,
Grief is the running tap that is my eyes,
The mouth that morphs birds songs
and that which I call poetry,
Grief are the walls that make up my room,
They listen silently,
Whilst I hurl myself on the floor,
Grief is the persian rug in the room,
Collecting the river of my tears,
Grief is the burden of light,
How without it, there is peace in the night,
Grief is the nightmares in my sleep,
How I watch her and them repeatdly hurt me,
How sometimes it is never hurt,
My father shows, but for weeks the lingering of loss lingers,
Grief is my knees hitting the soil as I cry over graves,
Or the letters I wrote for him as a child,
Grief is that 10 years later I still wail when missing him,
I still can see the grin in his face, and recall conversations,
Real grief is Ama’s death,
the emptiness in my breath is her,
It is the bed I lay on,
How it holds me still and lets me rest until I awaken,
Only to repeat the sorrow all over again,
Grief is embedded into the cracks of my smile,
My laugter the biggest deciever,
My love an evergrowing ocean,
Yet a black pool of blood knowing it can never be anything,
Grief is in my hair, scalp, in the spaces between my teeth,
Grief is me,
I am it,
My hands and how I carress people,
How I give so much,
To ensure that no soul ever feels what I have felt,
To ensure no scar ever touches skin,
Verbally or Physically,
Sometimes I become hysterical,
Overjoyed in life,
Use my body to release,
But even my dance is full of grief,
Shaking, morphing,
Haunting.