The way grief pours into you,
thick and rich like molasses,
sealing the loss with sticky solemnity.
Tag: death
Eternal Unrest.
When death stretches your eyelids,
so tight you don’t have time to rewind,
to have tea with your demons,
to repent and regret and relinquish yourself,
they stay rigoured,
a forced awakening of your last moments.
Only a life of sin would force your eyes open upon death, as if to say,
“watch yourself burn.”
An afterlife of eternal unrest,
reserved for the wicked.
After Death
How strange it is,
to watch someone’s face sparkle and dance with life on a Monday,
and for it to be gone by Tuesday.
How strange it is,
for our bodies to decay, to expire,
yet leave behind an undeniable
presence if we’re open to it.
to look into your eyes merely through a photograph
and still feel the life you once held through them.
It sometimes feels silly, futile,
to pour you liquor when I don’t drink,
to light a candle even though you don’t have eyes to see it,
to pray to you when I have no religious ties.
But death has taught me that the permanence of spirit goes beyond what is comprehendible for me.
It is precisely in the offerings, the flames, and the devotions where I can find you again,
because looking for you in the flesh is the true shortcoming of my humanness.
I cultivate a new relationship with you.
One where a dime dropped means you heard my prayers,
where a vivid dream of you is no longer a dream but a genuine encounter with you,
where a stranger in passing who looks eerily like you is a reminder that you still exist, just differently.
What beauty there is to foster connection with the deceased.
On the Fragility of Life
I heard the incessant tapping on my window. Not again, I groaned internally. I turned over onto my side and grabbed a pillow to squash over my head in hopes of drowning out the noise. Tap, tap, tap. It wasn’t letting up. I peeked at the clock sitting on my dresser a few feet away. 2:06am. Unbelievable, I thought to myself. Same time every night! Frustrated, I whipped my blankets off of me and aggressively drew my curtains. A large, indistinguishable black mass was hovering outside my window. It freaked me out the first time, but I’ve gotten used to it now. I banged on the window in an attempt to scare it off. It just slowly lapped in the air, like small waves. Well, fuck, I thought. I’m not getting rid of this thing. I turned over to sleep.
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Lashanda Forsberg 