nathan91
Still Here, Still Whole
Some mornings his shape is still in the room
not him, just the outline where he used to stand,
a color I haven’t finished fading yet.
Loving him was red, burning maroon,
the kind that doesn’t ask permission to hurt.
Moving on is greyer than I thought it’d be,
some days golden, some days nothing at all.
I know I’m still caught in that doorway.
I let myself know it without living only there.
Because here is the mortar, warm from my hands.
Here is the oil steeping amber in the window.
Here is a stranger’s shaking voice on the phone,
and me, saying tell me where it hurts
and meaning it for both of us.
I can’t fix my own color yet.
But I can still mix medicine for someone else’s,
still find the right words, still listen
like presence itself was a remedy.
Grief sits in the corner while I work.
It reaches for me on ordinary days.
I let it, then go back to the tending
the herbs, the sentence, the person across from me.
I don’t know when I’ll walk out of that doorway.
But my life is good, plainly, unperformed —
full of colors I’m still learning to hold,
red and grey and gold, all at once,
all mine.
