Grief is love with nowhere to go,

some shaman said and

took people to the sea so

their tears became tides and flowed freely.

 

We did this

for ourselves and each other

at the same stretch of sand where we grew breasts and scattered beards.

 

Though there wasn’t much beach left

everything and everyone else was the same.

 

Except you were gone. Are.

 

You grounded us

even as the one most cloudlike.

 

In your garden I sobbed,

picked an unripe yellow lemon and

rosemary (remembrance),

to inhale comfort

 

because we never came out here together

only your dark room a hundred times.

 

only in my dream

you showed me your flowers

which will only spread over your ashes.

 

because you will not grow into

an old mindless man with us—

you who were always most elderlike in our youth.

 

because you can’t fully beat this and

make greater meaning of life

or say aloud

we already have.

 

Somehow this feels like both betrayal and forgiveness.