As far as sad things go.
Fresh out of a writing workshop with no editing - one I'd like to come back to, so I'm giving it space here. This was written after we read Ada Limón's poem 'Not the Saddest Thing in the World'.
I leave the indent in the couch these days I stopped fluffing up the bottom cushion and the back one and the pink pillow my body is always pressed up against when I am sitting in my favorite corner of the couch Sometimes it’s his indent there and I like seeing how his body leaves different marks in the blue velvet cushion, his weight distributed in different places, his marks not mine I leave the dishes dirty for longer stretches of time and don’t make myself feel bad if it’s days before I get to them I like a tidy home but it’s not the cure for everything and sometimes the body just needs to rest to lay down on the couch and look up at the uncracked ceiling or out at the sky impossibly blue except when it’s not Except when the fog is thick and heavy and a shade of grey there isn’t a name for yet but most days lately it’s blue except when it’s raining– even then sometimes I let the cat hair gather on the carpet longer than I used to it’s not hurting anyone and sometimes my cat will open his mouth in that weird way cats do when they are smelling with their nose and their mouth at the same time I did not know cats did this before I had one and it makes me laugh every time and I reflexively open my mouth and mimic him– even though he does not see me do it and even if he did he wouldn’t care he doesn’t care about much and some days I envy him for that except when I don’t except when I feel waves of gratitude wash over me and I remember the mail that day or the missed phone call or the texts or all the ways all the people I love are knocking I guess what I am asking is when is it ok to stop actively grieving? Do you just stop one day? Because there are times when I think it has passed like a bad storm with two dark eyes and evil winds that just wanted to take it’s anger out on a city - any city - and there you were in the way, right place right time But then it comes back when you least expect it– when you’re walking down the street without an umbrella in your bag and all of a sudden the tears come and you think of your mother and her new life and all the things that have come undone that can never be done again It’s not the saddest thing in the world but it’s up there as far as sad things go So I don’t vacuum the stairs very often anymore– there are so many of them and they’re that dark grey where you can’t even see the dirt gathering– there should be a name for that color of grey and no one notices and it doesn’t change my life and there are so many more things to do while I have this bag of skin and bones and I guess I want to do all of them still I want to kiss his face a million times until I leave an indent in his cheek and send all the letters to all the people I love, decorate the envelopes with vintage stamps and pretty stickers and follow the birds in the park to see where they hang out in the middle of the day and take mom to Italy and lie on the grass and stare up at the sky and leave home without an umbrella and hope it doesn’t rain