You are not here As my eyes scan your face each day wishing this photo wasn't a momento mori. You are not here in the studio upstairs, In the unfinished portrait I began, what seems like years ago, in these 2020 times. Paint and brushes waiting. But you are not here. I wanted to paint so I could grieve I wanted to brush life into your face. To say goodbye. To trace your eyes, in liquid dioxazine, so I wouldn't forget their kindness. The sadness just behind their crinkled laughter. Because you are not here. I feel it on the drive, when Mother Mother is singing to my anxieties, drenched in a wave of grief, pulled under with the current and then released into an abrupt emptiness, heart stinging. But sometimes I forget. I go to text you a Meme or book to make you smile. I see a show that I think you'd love and reach my mind towards you and for that split second, I forget, and You are here. . And then I am pushed back under drowning in a wave of dark emptiness as the moment passes and I remember You are gone. - Megan Powers