The losses

The tide comes in, a heavy, salt-gray swell, It fills the rooms where silence used to hum. No sudden chime, no bright, relieving bell, Just the slow thrum of being overcome. One day I stand upon a bleached-out crest, Breathing the thin, bright air of “doing fine,” The next, an anchor fastens to my chest, And pulls me clean beneath the waterline. I reach for fur that isn't there to touch— The velvet ghosts who paced the hallway floor. It’s strange how small things weigh so very much: A phantom scratch against a closed-up door, The quiet bowl, the sun-spot on the rug, The way they knew the shadows in my head. They gave the only kind of wordless hug That bridged the gap between the quick and dead. And then the deeper ache—the house gone still, No chair pulled back, no voice to fill the hall. My mother’s hands are quiet on the sill, No kettle sings in answer to her call. My father’s coat still hangs behind the door, One sleeve half-turned as if he just came in. The floors remember footsteps from before; The walls hold echoes worn and growing thin. Now I am orphaned in the middle-night, Listening for sounds that will not come again. It isn’t always dark; that’s how it goes. The “up” returns and lifts me toward the sky, Until the ground gives way beneath my toes And every “hello” leans toward goodbye. I miss the living breath, the shape of home, The quiet peace before the fracture came. I drift within this high and hollow foam, Still calling softly on each vanished name. But even in the ebb, the salt, the sting, When breath comes short and hours feel incomplete, I keep the shapes of every living thing— Warm fur, kind hands, the rhythm of their feet. The tide will turn; it always does, I know, Though knowing doesn’t make the waiting kind. I stand between the coming and the go, With all their vanished weight still close behind.