The Girl and the Ghost of Grief
I do not scream when it starts.
Just walk barefoot into the forest,
where birch trees bend down to me like elder women,
and the moss knows all of their names.
All of them from my season’s past,
haunting me, scolding me, reminding me of their sacrifices.
Breaking open my flesh, cracking the cavity of my chest,
where all of my rotten fairy tales drip out in despair.
My grief has learned to follow close behind
before it ever learned how to run away.
It lingers behind like steam from a broken kettle,
silent but always seeping through the cracks of my wreckage.
I used to call him father.
Now, he’s just a ghost.
One that carries the reeking of December’s air into my home,
the sound of creaking branches under his lumbering weight.
What holds the echoes of his every scream,
his touch that bruises every soft fruit it touches.
The ghost doesn’t speak.
He caresses my shoulders when I forget him,
pinches my skin when I smile too hard,
leaves my breath in frost every night.
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