Last Rites

Sometimes I envy the dead

Because when they leave the pain ceases

They are not left questioning the hard questions of existence

Feeling a hole the magnitude of a second heart overshadow the primary one

An eclipse with an undetermined end date

Sometimes I wish I could be a stone

Solid, unmoved, eroded by time and trauma but not crushed by it

The material mountains are made of, endurance stock

But I am alive and I am soft. Desperately trying to hold my fragile heart together in a flood of tears, spilling over the edges of my resolve to be silent, breathless and ok

I am alive. Left behind. Feeling the shadow of grief pass over me, the shift in the atmosphere, the holes inside the air

I am and you are not anymore and I know that this is the sort of wound that leaves a mark

A mark that says you were here

A mark that says my heart expanded enough to love you

A new sort of birthmark. Reminding me that flowers still grow in graveyards

And that life and the pain of loving is worth choosing 

Copyright 2022; Rebecca Presti