Picture on the Wall

Post by Desiree Aguirre.

Rock Hard

Nik slips into my thoughts with practiced ease. At first, these thoughts were rock hard, overwhelmingly powerful and painful. Time eases the edges, wears them smooth, like seawater on glass. But sometimes, I see someone that reminds me of my son, and the reminding feels like a vacuum, a bottomless pit, and the thought of my son, my beautiful boy, dead and gone, ashes to ashes and dust to dust, while this imposter walks tall and proud, sends me backward in time, and the vacuum sucks me in.

And I wonder how I can keep on keeping on without him. How I can live and breathe while he is not at all. It’s as if the swift passage of time has come undone, and I am back to square one, set a drift in a sea of agony.

I feel small and powerless, like a pebble caught in the current, tumbling and turning. I tell myself that my tears, wet salt water, will once again smooth over my grief. In the morning, new lines will be etched on my face.

Protolith

I’m a wreck of a smile,

a parent rock,

layered with clay, sand, and silt.

You were a skipper and a dipper

Crushed by gravity and fire

Into cosmic ashes, starlight dust.

I shed billions of tears

that etch the iron in my heart to rust,

leaving scars in multiple dimensions.