the time after

Feeling so the loss,
Cannot choose but ever weep the friend.

One. Two. Month month.

Many emails to answer. How many? No point in counting them. I wait for the strength to answer some, any, one. I start to think that I’ll never have the fortitude I’m waiting for.

Deep down, I know I never will. Because what I am hoping for, waiting fruitlessly for, foolishly for, is the ability to write words that touch my heart without touching it. To think of babochka without thinking of her, without scraping against the raw pink skin of her memories, her presence.

To thank people for mourning with me, to remember her with them.

What then? To face the emails someday, eventually, soon. But not today.

It is the time after, the time forever, the rest of my life. I’m just not caught up yet.

I’m still at the end of the roller coaster ride, at the end of the movie in the theatre, at the end of the book, in the bed just before the alarm goes off. My eyes are closed firmly shut, because if I don’t open them… It’s not done yet. It’s not time.

It’s not denial. It’s certainly not wallowing. It’s… It’s the holding onto the sensation of having.

Yon light is not day-light, I know it, I:
It is some meteor that the sun exhal’d,
To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,
And light thee on thy way to Mantua.
Therefore stay yet; thou need’st not to be gone.


I feel the emptiness and know acutely she is gone, my little love.

I know this, because in my hand, I hold fiercely onto her presence, how it felt to be around her. How it feels.

I touch upon the sadness and marvel that she touched me so. Touches me so. I sense the inexpressible longing I carry around within me, irrationally, tenaciously, jealously.

I don’t walk about all day missing her, all night mourning her. It’s not like that, not at all. It would be easier, crazier, simpler. If I did.

I feel the unconscious promise of coming home to her. Just another ordinary moment in my life, standing in front of the apartment door, unlocking it. Not thinking about anything in particiular. Jiggering the locks about. Pushing the door open.

And I find myself being surprised, shocked again, when I come into the apartment to one two catchen catchen. I know that is the number I staff and I know that is the number that will appear at the door, and yet.

One. Two. Catchen catchen.

Where? Oh.