play, pause, replay

the shape of grief

There's a shape of my Mum's name tattooed on my right wrist.

My sister got her birth flower and I got the shape of her name

etched on our golden skins.

It curses out the pain—that makes us want to cry.

Look at the ocean between us, honey.

The vast stretches of blue and the crack of our hearts.

It's just another day; it will be over before you know it.

Before you know it has got better.

A stained flesh in the swell of red, a bunch of

orchids on the dressing table, and the September journal.

Did I say "I love you" in our last phone call?

A lonely conversation fades away in the wine stain on the tablecloth.

Liquor-washed mouths spit blood,

Mad women burn their bruises.

The city lights go out before I can make out any of them.

Wait by the shore, draw your name on the sand,

and let it settle in the warmth of the Caribbean sun.

Roll the window open and spit out the gum 

you've been chewing for hours.

There's a stale aftertaste that doesn't go away.

Stay, honey, let's dream of the rotten shades of azure

under the pastels of the last sun.

We burn the poetry that was once alive in our pixie-lit tales.

We bleed on the green of the funeral.

I thought our sunsets had died over the blossoms

and black holes; the phoenix never rose from the ashes.

Think of a moment bent on a lavender twig.

A skeleton of it pricking your skull, bubbling blood out

of your lifeless eyes.

Forget to breathe underwater for once, darling.

There's an emptiness glittered in the epiphany,

and a string of sorrow sliced through it.

We threw away the last piece of gold as our silver stars

faded into the black hole of sealed tragedies.

– we forgot our sad prose and danced in the weeping fields of wisteria.