The Quiet Things
Some losses don’t arrive with the sound of thunder, they settle quietly, in places you once called ordinary.
The Quiet Things
They said grief was a river.
But it feels more like salt
staining the edges of everything,
Your hands,
the windows,
even the prayer beads left on the table
like, they, too, gave up counting.
Last night,
the wind moved through the house
as if it had something to say.
You almost asked it to stay,
to tell you what the walls had heard
when you weren’t listening.
There are altars everywhere now,
the kitchen sink
with its chipped porcelain
where the faucet leaks, slow as confession,
the cracked door
letting in a slice of light like a blessing
you aren’t sure you deserve.
You keep writing their name
in the margins of books
You’ll never finish,
like the act of writing
might call them back,
or at least make the silence
less still.
And when the moon comes,
thin and restless,
You wonder if she too remembers
how she once drowned herself
in the darkness,
just to feel holy.
Back to the Land
When someone leaves, their voice lingers in the ordinary, in memory, in residue, in the smallest corners, until the earth quietly takes them back again.
I keep finding your voice
caught in the teeth of the radiator
as if the heat knows you by name.
The curtains sway
like they’ve been drinking all night
and can no longer keep secrets.
I fold my hands the way someone
might hold a map in the dark,
waiting for a country
that doesn’t know they exists.
Outside, rain moves through the air,
dragging a wet light
across the face of every building,
like it is blessing or punishing something
I can’t see.