“How are you holding together?”
Is the unkind utterance on the receiving line for the boy who lives numb far below the surface of a private salt lake,
for the girl drowned in other people’s needs,
for the widower smiling in a suit he never wears over his wife’s coffin,
for the widow white knuckling the flowers she only wants to grind under her heels and scream for everyone to get the fuck out.
“Hold up.”
“Hold on.”
“Keep together.”
These are the words each one of them poisoned, falling on the heart like acid rain in grief.
The heart was made to break. The original muscle in the body needs its time to come
Undone.
Don’t keep it together.
‘How are you falling apart?’
Are you pulling like strings on a violin the memories of the lost one and testing them under tension?
How are you flaying those sensitives nerves as you recall the touch of lovers lost or gone rancid with bad time?
How is it, you sinking your nails into your own heart like though the pink flesh of an overripe grapefruit until all in one moment of stinging spray and bitter salvific release the fruit is gone and there’s just you.
Blinking
Weeping
A mess
That took way too fucking long to happen.