Embrace

August 04,2021

Grief, you hold me in your arms tonight. I close my eyes to your cold embrace, your arms so wide and fulfilling. I seek your company while the whole wide world tells me I can grow around you. Lives must be lost sometime to save one, losing has never felt better than it has like today.
In the times when radical ideas of sensitivity and warmth are propagated like sad election news, I find mine fallen face flat at the rising hands of despair.
The day you chose to leave, am I allowed to sit and complain with all my life’s acquired knowledge? Am I allowed to look at the woman who walked away from the table and feel proud of her? She walks in high heels, her toes aching from the run. She has walked and walked through every street, every corner of that ruthless house and searched down every car’s backseat.
Grief, where do you hide? Which side of the bed do you like? Which toothpaste makes your mouth feel dull? Which tee-shirt do you wear to dates? Which woman pleases you the most and oh for Christ’s sake tell me which of the hearts have you shoved your dagger into the hardest and deepest?
Grief, you sit with your chosen brands of whiskey and wine, each sip you be so grateful for. You like your existence, you see your name inscribed on bedside tables of souls who struggle to sleep at night.
Grief, you unwind dead telephone wires in your free time, the receivers of which are tongue tied. You bring back scraps of stale words that never found home. You glue them into crumpled sheets you picked up from the bin and stick it to their walls. That’s what they wake up to the first thing in the morning, their heads rushing, hands shaking, heart thumping, sweat trickling down the side of their ears. They haven’t gotten out of bed in the longest time. They don’t remember their last shower. They don’t have meal timings and the book by their side haven’t had it’s pages turned.
Grief, I couldn’t tell anyone how I have feared returning home to an empty kitchen. The house belongs to the one who cannot cook herself a meal for one, the spices aren’t arranged in an alphabetical order, unfolded laundry and empty beer bottles being the only company. Empty picture frames and unmatched plates reminding me of how there is never a guest.
Grief, it’s been long I’ve had a head pressed into my chest, my tee-shirt wet from the pair of eyes crying to me their day’s exhaustion. Or a pair of hands around my waist, pulling me closer to plant a kiss on my forehead. I’ve been told forehead kisses and tight hugs feel like the favorite flavour of ice cream. I’ve never felt either, and I haven’t had a cone in the longest time.
Grief, I’ll grow around you. I’ll build us a wall of faith, a garden of memories and a balcony of hope. Grief, for once, let me wrap my arms around you, and please don’t turn the other way.

– The Mad Woman