11.01.17

The Hunger

      Grief is a hunger. It’s the kind of hunger that envelopes your stomach and your throat. You feel it every time you breathe. And after a while, your body starts to shake. It needs, it needs.

      Apparently the food it needs in this case is Time.

      “It just takes time.”

      I have been hungry for a month and 17 days. It comes in waves. I forget for minutes at a time, and then I see the color yellow. The color orange. A little hat, or anything little really and suddenly everything that she was, blue eyes, coral lipstick, watercolors, orange string, egg salad, scarves,fourleafcloversmy entire childhood is flashing before my eyes and whirling into the depths of my abdomen and I want nothing more than to be there, in my stomach, with everything that she was and I am. And sometimes these waves come hurling, crashing, foaming over the side of some poor toilet. Because being sad can make you throw up.

      Clearly nothing about Grief is appetizing, yet the hunger pursues.

      Where is Time?

      How will Time taste?

      I bet Time is salty. But the garnish is sweet, for Grief is truly Love. When Love puts her hood up and takes our hearts from the palms of her hands and instead cocoons them between her canines, she is Grief. She never chews, which is why we feel so hungry. We wait, with Grief’s thirty-two ivories clamping down on our grape-like hearts, until Time comes and tickles the throat of Grief and her jaw drops open, her hood falls; she is Love once again and at last, her open palms catch and cushion our wailing, falling hearts. Time plunges deep into each of our gasping, open baby bird mouths, down our throats and into our quivering bellies, filling them, warming them. Silence.

         And then we breathe, full painless breaths. Grief is no longer a hunger but a memory - in the form of tooth marks on our hearts.

      Hearts that are too weak or seized by Grief one too many times, are punctured and bleed out. The skin of a grape can only last so long. The truth is, Time comes when you are ready for her. Sometimes the readiness never comes. Certain levels of pain and remembrance are inseparable.

      I will be ready at some point, but right now I want to feel, I want to remember. May the waves pull me under and take me there, take me to her, where the laughter and kisses and clip-on earrings are real, they are happening right now, gripping my heart, a throb that hollows out my stomach, the echo of her laugh bouncing off the interior of my throat into a cry, my cry, because I am her, because we are culminations of the things we love most.