12: Comfort - Dec 2021

Erik

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


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