Grief, personified

Grief is nearly a person.

He pulls up his small rickety
wooden chair and sits
quietly beside me.

He is my ill-mannered guest.

He never arrives
promptly, showing up at the most
inopportune moments, scratching his
chair legs across marble tiles
during grand openings, portraits gawking.

Or shoving the splintery old chair
right in the midst of our crowded
Thanksgiving table last year, just after
laughter filled our bellies.

What a bastard child, Grief.
Wanted by no one, really.

Grief is my pseudo friend
who wears out his welcome,

My whining toddler
his yearning insatiable
even after countless
tears, tissues, Ben & Jerry’s,
pounds.

Grief is my fifth half-brother
little known yet blood-close,
watching me rest my weary
forehead upon her shoulder
tonight, staring rudely
from the corner.

Grief sometimes has palpable
clay-covered palms, a ghost-like
lover, whispering memories on
wings of blue and black butterflies
at dawn in my backyard, or piercing
through winter’s horizon across
my frozen windshield.

Grief has never written
me a long, perfumed goodbye
letter. He simply stops
dragging his rickety chair
legs across my floor,
leaving me
with silence
again.

–Bethany Wallace, 10/14/2015