And What If The Grief Is Eternal?

A series of ‘What If’s?’

And what if, on my death bed, it is your name that I whisper in my final prayer and it is your soul that I call for?

What if I die and you’re the angel at the gate? What if I live and you’re the angel I await?

And what if the grief never disappears but instead shape shifts into mundane loss that sits uncomfortably in my subconscious?

And what if my eyes keep finding you in strangers’ silhouettes and I keep writing you into my to do list?

And what if you never die? what if the memory of you never dies? what then do I tell my tongue as it licks away my uncried tears?

What if i eternally taste the unspoken goodbye underneath my tongue?

And what if your words are memorised into my thirst for knowledge?

What if the grief remains the childhood bedtime monster ready to revive my memory into insomnia when it dare forget?

What if sadness eternally tastes of you?

What if time does not heal, but instead unravels my delusions and my unreliable memory transforms my friends sympathy into unanswered calls for the psychiatric as they remind them they have no cure for delusion?

What if for every disaster i miss a different piece of you? What then will become of me?

If you will not die in my memory how will I live in peace?

I realised the grief and sadness had become apocalyptic yearning when i read the words ‘stylo à la plume’ and it reminded me of the poem you sent me about your mother.

You see, in those 4 words I remembered the taste of the creative love we shared and the joy in my eyebags when I heard your sweet voice. I would have done it all over again for you.

Indeed, perhaps the smell in my room is the smell of the grief setting alight every time I rewatch, replay and reimagine us. and I know only I can blow the candle out.

I’ve tried grieving away my tears. Letting its sweet & salty taste merge into one as they marinate into my soul. For they’ll never taste the same again.

Yeah, I can still taste the singing of unspoken sorrow lingering between my lungs. Let yourself breathe again. Let the grief haunt you…. until it haunts you no longer.