I threw all your letters out the window the night you told me that love was like a shooting star: it passes. They fell into your mouth like heavy sighs & you knew never to speak the truth to me again.
I treat inexperienced advice like a lesson in how to offer truce to your own self. So I turn to the books that tell me how to take care of myself, & they teach me how grief, just like you, offers itself in stages. Never as a whole, always too much.
1. DENIAL
My mother tries to wake me up for the seventh time in the day. I don't even flinch. Her voice is the sound of a thousand years of experience mumbling all at once. And the only string of syllables I catch is your name. This is how it is now. The symmetries you called so fondly even in your sleep have fallen into a metamorphic mess. Nothing occurs in unison with the tandem in my body.  Not pain, not memories. Definitely not the truth. My mother tries to wake me up for the tenth time. But if I close my eyes just long enough, I don't have to see you're not here.

2. ANGER
I was walking down the street I secretly named after us when I heard a mumble of "there now, please don't cry", & something inside me split into two as I glared at the man who had spoken those words to his disgruntled lover. I never imagined that one day, the same words that I had leaned on to recover would break underneath my own feet. At least I listen to you now.

3. BARGAINING
My poems are weeping red with the nights we spent in secret rendezvous. Wrapped under solitary sheets now, I beg for the words to go home. For you to come home. They tell me my poetry sounds more real now, more beautiful than ever before. Love takes away the rest of the poems along with the pain. But if this is what it means to be able to taste words, I would rather trade them for a momentary taste of you.

4. DEPRESSION
Every evening at 5:30 pm, when the sun shines through the window exactly the way you liked it, I wait for the sunrays to hit my face. But they only turn me blind. Not with memories or pain. Just a blanket of empty space. I do not know if this is what not feeling feels like.

5. ACCEPTANCE
If I was here, these words wouldn't be.

Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsv8RDYdQyc