Sometimes on nights like this
months into remission
when your thoughts swirl around death
in ever tightening circles,
like pennies circling the funnel exhibit,
you can feel the hysteria clawing up
your ribs and into your throat
pumping your lungs
until you hold your breath to keep
from passing out
or screaming incoherently
at the shadows
as you pace the length of your house
listening to the sound of your loved ones snoring
and imagining
the silence in their absence
and all the clothes and books and furniture
and things that mean nothing to you now
but everything once they are gone--
the clothes that you could never wear
or books you cannot read because they're in a language you never learned
or a faith you do not believe
or the coffee table you abhor but tolerate because they like it,
or are simply too frugal to give up,
or the knitting needles you don't know how to work,
or the paints you don't know how to use,
or the house plants you don't know how to care for--
you think of those things in a stranger's hands,
or on another person's body,
in someone else's home,
or sitting on the curb waiting to be scavenged
or shipped to the dump--
you imagine the sound of empty hangers swinging in an empty closet,
the operator's voice when you cancel their phone line, their subscriptions,
their credit cards,
as you slowly erase everything that is them,
and close the door to their empty bedroom, filled with their smell and the ghost of their voice,
trying to rehearse what you will say
to tell people they're gone,
and have to bear their sorrow
and their sympathies,
and their loss,
when all you want to do is lay down
and scream and kick
and die with them,
so you don't have to feel what you're feeling,
and you are glad, so glad, that tomorrow there is work,
mind numbing
soul numbing
route, formulaic
work,
and you don't--no, you won't
have the time or the energy to think about what's worse: losing the person you love
or leaving them behind to bear all of this
without you.
