A Poem About Burning Bridges (Grief has many faces)

Grief has many faces. Grief tastes like glass on a burnt tongue. It sounds like a father giving encouragement in a dream that dissipates upon waking. It looks like a stranger that was once a friend. It’s dancing on someone’s toes when you were smaller and newer, before your heart felt like lead and your voice was thick lava, oozing over black, jagged flashbacks, intermittently flickering inside clouds pregnant with thunder. Each one draws fresh blood and you clean and you disinfect and the scars criss cross across the night sky until you have built your own universe. Grief is the dog you raised from a puppy forgetting about you. Grief is not saying goodbye and not being invited to the funeral. Grief is waking up one day and not being able to remember a time when your mother ever hugged you. Grief is not speaking up for yourself when you were soaking in abuse. Grief is loving and losing and loving and losing until the ends are all tied up and the colours blend together. It’s a suitcase you never wanted to pack for a trip you didn’t want to take. Grief is allowing the leftover shards to mellow in the smoke until the melted rubber hisses and fades into silence.