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Posts Tagged ‘loss’

When Memories Come Back

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 30, 2025| 1 Comment »


 
 
I love when people share memories of you
I have forgotten. Like when your big sister
remembered the time we visited your aunt’s
new home, and you, six years old and unstoppable,
were entranced by the decorative glitter glued
to her walls, and while the rest of us were nearby
making food, you stood there in the hallway
and picked at the sparkles until there was a pile
of shine on the floor. “And she was so mad,”
remembers your sister. The memory glimmers
in me like the first stars at dusk, barely there,
but becoming more clear by the moment,
then shining and bright. Yes, that’s what it’s like when
old memories return. I get a shining sliver
of you back. Like finding some constellation
that was always there, I had just forgotten where
to look, and now it’s so present, so true,
I can use its light to navigate my nights.

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After Effects

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 12, 2025| 4 Comments »


 
 
In the dream, Craig said to me, 
you know, Rosemerry, there
are fifty-eight kinds of loss. 
He pointed me to an easel
with a large blank page and handed me
a moss green pen. Here, he said. 
Fill them in. There were two columns. 
Loss of living. Loss of the dead. 
In minutes words filled the page 
like clover reproducing in a field. 
Loss of time. Loss of breath. Loss of love.
Loss of masks. Loss of shoulds. Loss
of musts. When I woke, I could
no longer name them all. But I
felt them growing in me, feel them,
still, flowerless and powerful,
exploiting any cracks in my certainty,
breaking me down from the inside,
making me softer, softer. Softer.

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Two Radiances

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on October 15, 2025| 11 Comments »


 
hours ago
I lit a golden candlestick
now only honey-scented space—
 
years since you’re gone
everywhere I go,
the perfume of you—

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Just One Scene in One Movie

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on September 1, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
and all the scaffolding
that has held me up
crashes down
and I stumble
from the theater
to find myself
in my body,
heart naked as a cloud.
I crouch in the dry dirt
behind a building,
weeping,
unable to stand,
stunned again
by the truth
of loving what
must be lost.
When finally I rise,
my hat comes off.
How right
if feels in my hair,
on my face,
the wind.
 

  • after watching Sentimental Value at Telluride Film Festival

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So Alive 

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 15, 2025| 22 Comments »


 
Finn, the larkspur are nearly done blooming now,
the tall stalks are scruffy with seed pods where
the dark blue petals used to be.
Is it strange to give you the garden report?
Today is four years since you chose to leave
this world of bindweed and deep red dahlia,
this world of millipedes and green beans
dangling on their vines. The sky is thick
with smoke from a wildfire not so far away.
It was a relief when it began to rain
while I was picking snapdragons and
sunflowers, zinnias and lavender.
I didn’t mind getting drenched
while I filled five vases with flowers,
four vases for our home and one
your father and I took to your grave.
I felt so alive in the middle of the storm,
arranging the blooms in vases just so
while the water dripped from my hair, my nose.
Felt so alive as I smelled the air and spoke
to you and the flowers and sky.
Today my friend Wini told me one way
to keep life sacred is to ask the holy to come.
Please, I said as I stood in the rows.
Please, come. Is it possible the asking itself
is the bridge from the everyday to the holy?
Because I felt it. There in the rain
with my grief-bent heart. There beside
the calendula, aphids and all. Hair plastered
to my head. Tears on my face. Memory
of you writing I love you in the carrot bed.
Me making bouquets for a difficult day.
Even when it hurts, the holy.

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Morning

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 7, 2025| 6 Comments »


 
By the time I realized
I was dreaming of him,
it was too late.
 
Already, the dream
was vanishing like night,
like dew.
 
For an hour I lay there,
eyes closed, grasping
at glimpses. Losing them.
 
All I was left with:
He was happy.
So was I.
 
Finally, I opened my eyes
to this world where
he is not. And yet.
 
The sun was here warming
the bed. More truly, the sun
was not physically here.
 
The sun is somewhere
far, far, far away,
but that doesn’t stop it
 
from transforming
the whole room.

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Two Mothers

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 4, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
lighting a small candle tonight
for your child as you
light a small candle for mine—
from hundreds of miles and years apart
we rhyme

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Doors Where I Have Knocked

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 6, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
Door of forgiveness that’s never locked.
Door of dreams. Door of god.
Door of contentment without a knob
that can only be entered with empty hands.
Door of tenderness that opens with breath.
Thick door of safety. Wide door of rest.
Windowless door to the future. Hingeless
door of hope. Door of patience. Door of no.
Door that requires I take off my name
before it will let me in. Door of prayer.
Trapdoor of sin. Door of courage.
Door of less. Door where the password
is always love. Trick door that appears
when I’m too weak to move. Door of
the heart where someone knocks back,
where I listen as if I might understand.
But it was the unwanted door of loss—the door
where I didn’t chose to knock, forged
from despair and gnarled wood—
that was the door that changed me for good.

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When Everything Has Been Stripped Away

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 1, 2024| 5 Comments »


 
 
It’s like when the ice floe
moves through the river bed
ripping out any ice
winter has set, until
the whole channel is
roil and rush and wild
upheaval. I remember
what that was like
after he died—
when hours, days,
whole months, were
stripped of all skin
and all that was left
was the naked, beating heart.
I thought that was what it meant
to be stripped, but then,
I remember the first time
I knew for sure if I could have
my boy back, I wouldn’t.
Not if the world stayed the same.
It was a useless bargain,
anyway. But I knew
it was selfish to wish
him back to this world
to ease my own pain.
That was the moment
my whole emptied being
understood there was
more to lose. And I don’t know
if we could say that I chose it
or that life chose it for me.
I was standing in the drive
beneath the evergreen tree.
Everything changed then
when even my useless desire
to bargain with death
was stripped from me.
Today as the ice floe
tears through the canyon,
I listen as it alters
the landscape. Trunks of trees
bash against the rocks.
The rocks themselves tumble
in cold, thick waves.
Nothing to be done,
save surrender to the tumult.
Inside me, my heart beats, untamed.
Yes, I think. That is
exactly what it was like.
 

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Just a Thing?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 13, 2024| 6 Comments »

I’ve worn it since the day he died,
this ring that was my son’s.
A simple band—not flashy.
Plain silver inlaid with white.
I touch it when I think of him.
I think of him when I touch it.
My thumb has memorized
it’s smoothness, its edges.
I know it now as well
as once I knew his cheek.
I wear its secrets,
and do not ask it to tell.
One winter, I lost the ring.
It felt like losing him again.
I know. It’s just a thing.
But it’s not. It was his ring.

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