i grieve,
i have seized bourbon darkness in a chokehold
with my tongue holding it captive
bashing against my teeth.

i grieve,
my tear ducts birth a million sawdust grains
in the stolid hours,
between the rooster choir,
and the morning mass.

i grieve,
that I saw you a crushed leaf in the garden
before the day of pruning,
that I am too powerless,
unable to intervene
or to fully let go.

i grieve,
i have told not another human
in the many long shadowless nights
since passed
at corners largely unseen i still grieve.

i grieve,
involuntarily swallowing back despair
in place of speech,
that solid sphere of tungsten buried in my core
still persists,
and struggles to leave.

i grieve,
as he stood at the exit door,
half his wrinkled face illuminated
by cobalt blue strips of ripening dawn
his eyes told mine:
"everything is all right child."

i grieve,
stirred hard in the wash of a great
sudden passage,
i'm yet to find my reprieve.

i grieve,
i swim in circles 'round the basin
of my every unspent grief,
blindfolded tightly under the marigold sun.

i grieved,
for I have been utterly powerless,
all these piled-up years that's still counting,
to face death that is inevitable and looms
protruding like the spine of earth over the horizon,
or to fully prepare.