Maybe your name was Calliope

 My mind is in 2012 today. My body is in the recovery room, someone yelling over me about not breathing and my lips turning blue. I'm in the day stay bed, a clueless nurse insisting she won't tell me which surgery they did, because nobody remembers anything after anesthesia anyways. I'm laying in bed in a home that isn't mine, scared to look down at my stomach, listening to the song I used to sing to my baby.

I take every year's anniversary off, but grief doesn't stay on its designated day. How long am I going to keep knitting blankets for a baby I never got to hold?

Sunday

You leaned over to kiss me and
I was intoxicated for a moment
The way your stubble felt
Grazing a reminder across my cheek
I turned my head
Hoping
You'd kiss my neck so I could breathe you in
Like a deep fog
Like a rolling evening storm
You didn't

I miss the feel of you

Your skin is earth and
I want to be buried

There Was No Funeral

One of my favorite poems:
"This Woman"
by Alysia Harris

The line that gives me chills and fills my eyes up with tears:

"To all the women who have been

Pried open,

Propped up,

And Jadaposed:

I'm sorry

There was no funeral for the going out of your smile

And the coming in of strangers."

No, there was no funeral. There was no funeral, and for years, there was no recognition. I was reminded that the louder I yelled, the more worthless I was underneath my insistence that I. WAS. WORTH. SOMETHING.

I dreamed about strangers who would quietly peel off my armor, look at me, hold me, and see who I am.

Just see me.

Not tell me who I am. Not define me. Just give me some credit.

Strangers who might love me for the blood on my hands and my clothes, might see my life and aspirations as a work in progress, might offer me the soft, quiet benefit of the doubt, the security, the unwavering assurance and peaceful extended arms that would have allowed me to relax, set down my burden, and rest.

just pull it

i thought i wanted You to do and say things that considered me and made me feel wanted and loved

but maybe i only thought i wanted that, while what i really wanted after this much hurt

was for You to just say you had no intention
that You didn't love me
that You wouldn't consider me
just SAY IT

so that Your words and Your actions could finally line up and it would make sense

LYS

The LYS closed. Not a word on its social media. Phone still goes to their normal voicemail. Google JUST updated today. I had planned on spending my christmas money there for some equipment and accessories.

This is the sense grief makes.

Because seven and a half years ago, I was crying at my spinning wheel until 6 in the morning, working on 4 ounces of rough karakul from them, unable to stand up from the pain in my abdomen. I was admitted to the hospital for emergency surgery. I missed the only spin in and fiber bar I had ever planned to go to, bent over and bleeding in the ER. The grief I felt, albeit numbly, at what was going on, wove itself into the disappointment of missing the event. Because even though it seemed frivolous and unimportant - a spin in among friendly people felt like the real world. And I was in some alternate dimension, being infused with morphine, unable to join them, unable to reach their pleasantness or joy. On that day, I was separated from that world, and my grief spun itself a story using the language of something mundane.

A couple of weeks later, I went to a fiber festival and spent the money I would have used on the baby on soft things, pretty things, things that felt like the real world I craved and missed.

That local yarn store was a connection to the life I lost in 2012.

Of course, that's nuts, they are just a business, and businesses close, and I could rarely afford to visit them anyways. I am grateful for the visits I did have.

But I feel alone tonight.

Like my grief lost its voice, and the hum of the wheel feels far away and lonely, and I feel so quiet and just

sad.