Dead

It’s stronger than a feeling, or a thought;

it’s quiet

Silent,

It creeps up and inside, and doesn’t tell

You how long it’ll stay.

It’s loud and

Piercing,

It doesn’t refrain

To tell you how much this means to you—

And little it’ll take to destroy it.

You don’t understand what happened to your reflection

But you know it’s fractured and cracked

And the sadness you feared would surface,

Is like chunks of ice in a pool, clinking and sloshing around, hard stones of pain that feels like the hot searing sun.

Everyone wants you to quickly grieve and move on.

It’s easier

And it looks better on paper

than to see your tears at a supermarket

Or at a bank.

It looks better and prettier on paper,

It looks prettier, “Put on that lipstick and get out of the house.”

You stuff it all inside, so deep,

You cram it so deep,

All the death and all the pain

And all the fear,

And then the nerves deaden a bit over time.

They are gone,

You are not.

Why does it feel like I’m gone too?

Like if there’s just a strong enough wind…

And I’ll finally evaporate into thin air?

Dead, what does that mean?

We learned that matter is too powerful to be destroyed so

Where are they?

They must be somewhere.

I cannot take a breath,

It releases my tears,

I cannot fear this death—-

But I know it is near.

I lost many people. I lost our family pets.

I lost people in other ways.

I feel like when they are gone, I lose my breath.

This all looks great on paper.

It all seems so neat and compact and organized and fresh—

But inside, I’m heavy and flailing and failing and falling, dead eyes looking at my reflection—-a palpable, melancholic mess.

But I love them. All of them.

And the ones I have now, I keep close by.

I lost my Baba, my great Aunt Lil, my first family dog Joey, a lady who taught in my choir class(I sobbed and sobbed in my dad’s arms when I found out she died) and our bearded dragon Cutie.

And our great friend here on Vocal, my friend and to so many others. Tom Bradbury. A man of tremendous beauty and heart.

One time, my father almost died of a heart attack.

I spent the whole night in his arms, crying for the loss of what could’ve been.

Death is everyone and everywhere and everything.

Dead is me and you and all of us.

It sure looks fantastic on paper.

But, we carry it everywhere we go,

So why can’t we share it

And why can’t we not move on,

And cry in the bank and supermarket

And tell the stranger next to you in line,

How much this means to you?