I too am not a bit tamed—I too am untranslatable

Tag: loss

  • Let her in.

    She’ll come in the after,
    once everyone else goes back to their lives
    leaving you alone and full of holes.
    When she knocks at your door,
    let her in.
    She’ll stand there on your doorstep forever otherwise,
    a barrier between you and all the life still left to live.
    Take her in.
    Care for her.
    Lovingly, tenderly,
    as you would a small child.
    She too is confused and terrified,
    and yet somehow holy.
    She will haunt you for the rest of your days.
    She is sacred; the light of every loss that created her shines so bright
    under a cloak of melancholia.
    She is nostalgia for moments long-gone
    and the ache of love left behind.
    So let her in.
    Wash her feet, let her rest,
    let her settle.
    She isn’t going anywhere.

  • I spend a lot of time crying in your closet.

    Is this even therapeutic? I put my thoughts down on paper but they’re still in my head.
    I unplugged the hearing aids a few weeks ago. Today I plugged them back in, because it made me feel better.
    Everything is just as it was but nothing is the same.
    I can see each of these sweaters on and they all look beautiful. I can’t look at the hat with the polka dots without wanting to cry; main hat in rotation for chemo and associated with the beginning of the end in my mind.

    The cream colored one in the middle was purchased in North Carolina over Christmas in December 2022, a surprise while us younger girls were out shopping. I don’t think it was worn again after the diagnosis in March 2023.

  • I’m all jumbled up

    So sad and the air feels so heavy. I keep forgetting to breathe. When I remember, I find myself gasping dramatically in a way that’s probably very annoying to anyone around, but nobody says anything because they know I am “going through it.”

    I am utterly unable to believe that my best friend is dead. I am completely furious at him for thinking he could use again after being clean for so long. I want to shake him and tell him what an idiot he is, and then I start crying because I’m a horrible person for thinking my dead best friend is an idiot, despite still not really understanding that he is, in fact, dead.

    I want to write and write and write about this but I have to force myself to get even this much out. I keep pulling up our text messages so I can see the hearts he sent me the night before he died. I stare at those emojis like I’m deciphering a message he left for me, something that would explain why he had to leave me or just a funny thing that he knows would make me laugh.

    I haven’t laughed in a while.