Standing at bus stops, pulling apart my groceries in self-serve checkouts, a cafe run only achieved once, traveling to cities to merely see a performance — I am a woman saddened by natural inabilities to know of their existence, or rather the knowledge I would not see them again, not in this context at least, and so therefore I would never know them at all. The endpoint of loneliness has become a gateway to basic emotions, an allowance to decenter the disturbance of our own existence to allow relationality to develop. We nod, pat on backs till both are comforted, and then our feet catch upon another sidewalk as all we felt fades back once more. We as humans all condone the inevitable action of self-wallowing, the disgust that is simplistically natural, but action is not even limiting in this field, we as humans grieve over everything… Maybe I just do.

There is an imprecise grief that comes with December, an unknowing baggage of words and feelings I will not admit to myself. I am alone and have been for a handful of years and while I should not be shocked by my inability to persevere past continual crying, I appear to collapse upon myself each year when people are willing to hold you longer or feed you more. I am not sixteen anymore and it’s December and while I thought my life was ending four years ago when my walls were chalkboard black and I couldn’t run from my mattress on the floor, I am diminished with the knowledged I can never go back, never once, no matter how loud I shout.

I think of death a lot. I am not precise in eventual conclusions, nor have I created any foundation suitable enough to not fall apart when speaking on this issue, but simply if I were to pull apart my skin until I am a slight movement of my soul, I might understand all I have ever loved. I feel ashamed of my inability to pinpoint any current state of passion, whether I ponder on the embrace of romance or the sum of my debts, and so my lacks become more concurrent with this present baseline of ‘what if’ and it is clear I am struggling. Oversharing is a must, so I will leave it at this: Love can be more than what you are giving it. Yes, it can be brilliant and toe-curling to where you question if you were only in pain because you were fifteen and not because your scars didn’t heal, and while you ignore your family for the tiny minutes you feel you now live with as you lay by their side, there was always beauty in knowing that love can be a sacrifice of death, that even though they had passed away three years ago and you happen to drive by their gravestone on the way to work each morning, you always honk your horn and laugh till you can only smile, and somewhere in the distance a horn hocks back.

I feel too human. I should laugh at such a statement knowing that empathy is bound to exist in this body, but I am simply too scared by how damaged it makes me. By this I become territorial of my own grief, the inconsolable sadness proctored by my very own hands and situated beneath clothing far too loose for my liking. It is through this identification, I run. My knees are raw and aching so I must account for the bruising and muscle spasms, but I repented, I apologized, I told them I was sorry, please laugh with me once more, I am bound to wonder how that sounds next to me at night. We all looked like the moon and it was hard not to whisper that you held the light more, it seems the universe sings only for you. I should have fought harder. 

When you first decide to die, you thank yourself. It becomes peaceful to hear each breath as water only purifies and no longer burns. You apologize simply and your hatred no longer feels like a target but rather a confidant. An inconceivable normalcy is bound to exist with your unruly decision – you did not mean to be cruel, the harshness could no longer be contained to just yourself, your hatred was leaking and your fingers couldn’t mend all the holes; you were a good person, whose was young and possibly war-torn but the labels weren’t necessary so even if you were a good person sometimes you weren’t kind; you loved, and you still do presently but you have gotten confused with longing, so any concluding feelings all felt too fanatical and eventually too weak. I was dripping in love, encased in recognition that if I were to succumb to my own heartbeat, I had experienced what it meant to be drunk and still feel the flush on my cheeks hours later. It was devotion wrapped in a needed idealization that I was simply a body and you made me feel as if I never needed one to be loved by you.

Eventually, when thinking about religion, I thought of death to be carved from love. That, we as humans, held too much devastation and not enough hands to encase their body, they developed heaven and any type of afterlife where suffering is unknowing and peace was necessary, so their own very hearts did little ponder what it felt like still. They mourned before sickness, graceful in their decision that their love was never to be questioned, that reconciliation was possible when death was only a measure of time separating them. So, they prayed, and sung, and prepared the body as faith in their goodness was never argued and their love for them by default would never be a separator. What is love but not grief persevering, hmm?

In my all too serious, extremely lacking fantasy I should someday harbor about my life, it seems fair to acknowledge that there is no ‘another universe.’ This is all we got, all we have been given, and I am a little lost in making it seem worthy enough. I note that we are everchanging, ruinous creatures, sticky in shame and aching before collapse, but I wish to change so I am not as ruined as I thought. (?) I fail to link a future me in some present form of desire, a possible ‘what if’ on success or stability, possible love, yet there is not even a face to be formed, she is expressionless, bound by time and most likely debt, so I do her the honor of committing and she continues to brush hands with death, and the recycling of old tasteless haircuts and burdening effort will administer the same end.

I have loved exceptionally, greatly, magnificently to those I never received a name from, whose home is empty and whose last names are changed, and I wonder who is holding their body now, if they have been graced with warmth. I guess in most ways, if we are to assume life is our greatest tragedy, it is to be noted that love was there. That it is still there and that while it didn’t change anything nor did it save anyone, it mattered because we were alive and shared this vibrant emotion. A repetitive cycle of varying combinations of ‘If I could have loved you enough, I would have stayed” and “I envy even the earth that covers their body” until death can only mean love. Humans understand that death is a fundamental ending and still choose to love anyway, so in some twisted, pessimistic way that maybe could be positive in overcoming the fear of death, know that death could only be born from the love fostered to make the body, and the body never forgets, nor can you forgot how to love.

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We all know of the grief when our mother can’t attend our own funeral.

I have never loved her more for going first.