Poem – Empty

Lately when bad things happen
Like a death or a sickness
A bombing or destruction of something
Someone
Another awful event in the merry go round of life
I don’t react more than a frown and a sigh
I’m not surprised anymore
I’m not even surprised by my lack of surprise
Should I worry?

(That word again – should – the dirty word, the word that causes so much pain, the word my therapist said to erase from my vocabulary, full of impossibilities, full of unmet expectations, full of shame, should—)

I think: better to have gone numb
If I allowed myself to feel each event I would surely drown myself from the crying
I would start and…never stop

There is so much pain in this world
It hurts to feel everything so deeply.

I am a person easily moved to tears
I cry at every birthday, every birth

Never at death.

There, I am the hand-holder
The soothsayer
The clear eyed comforter of souls
The sieve.

Pour your emotions into me as I hold you and I will let them flow through me, return the energy to the earth below us
They are not mine to hold, but you are.
You are.

I cry at every sappy song on the radio
Every burst of love
Every smile
Every laughing fit

I cry imagining your face when you hear the words “I love you”
I have tears for every happy moment
I have tears for my own deep, personal pain

I have no tears for tragedy
My sorrow is too deep for that.

Cousin, hanged by his own hand at the age of eighteen in his father’s yard, left behind a pair of clean shoes and pristine watch, set neatly aside. He was my hero.

Grandmother, in a hospital room smelling like antiseptic and pain, loneliness eating her away like the illness inside her. She wrote such beautiful poems.

Aunt, a disastrous combination of pills and alcohol. I still see glimpses of her in strangers’ faces. I won’t mix my medicines ever again.

Mother, red red fingernails and cold wet hands. Cigarettes and beer and too little food. Pain pain pain pain pain pain pain

The first time I met him, my husband’s cousin wore a purple shirt in his casket, a shared favorite color. I held his father, a man twice my size, in sturdy stick-thin arms. I tucked a blanket around his brother’s shoulders and checked on him in the night.

Sister. Baby bird bones and tear smeared mascara and vomit. Dontlookatme. Ihateyou. Iwantittostop. Makeitstop. Crumbling crumbling crumbling. Building building building.

My sorrow is a yawning abyss that knows no end but all you can see is “empty”