I didn't fall apart the way I expected, which surprised me. There is grief, yes, pain, yes, a narrowing, long ache in the chest, yes - but also a strange openness, where breath continues like a horizon, persisting without permission against the sea-line of each hour. It is true, what they say - that suffering is not a cliff but a slope. You lean into it deeply, stare up at its summit, adjust your footing, stumbling and screaming against the Sisyphean Hell of it but you move t

I unbury the girl, drag her tiny limbs from the earth-rot in my chest where I keep her hidden.     She wakes with a sharp sob, toddles aimlessly in the dark room, then folds onto the floor under the heavy shell on her back & cannot muster the strength to get up again.   So, I soothe her, holding myself softly by the ribs at night, until a dawn-haze floods the room, lifting the shell off her unscathed, fleshy body, as we face each other naked in the light.   Her name is my nam