If  you don’t allow yourself
To sit with your grief
And to hold it with you
(Not forever, just for now)

It’s like taking a deep breath
And holding it
Until you suffocate your
Present self.

Maybe that’s the thing
About grief is it is something
Firmly situated in a painful
Present self.

And it may be more comfortable
To stay in the present with
The one I (past me)
Loved.

Because life without you,
Sometimes it seems like it echoes
Through dimensions beyond
My mortal comprehension

But my present self and I
Hold you deeply in
Every cell in my body
And that curve where my leg meets my hip
And the roots of Japanese Maple trees.

So maybe I don’t really need to be without you at all.