Since You’ve Gone

Since you’ve gone the soft parts
at my center have skinned over
I’m scalded milk wondering about

what mess I’m being poured into.
But I’m not so concerned now about
where I’m going, having lost

where I’m from.
The three of us left behind are
intimate with the expression

‘muddle through’ because it’s
what we do with nearly every minute
of every day, except for those

insidious holidays and commemorative
markers of life with a hole in it
where we work at being

jolly or thankful or at peace. There’s
no way we could ever achieve something
so graceful as peace when there’s such an

effort pushing it to our faces and out
our pinned up mouths, wrapping the corners
of smiles around tacks in our cheeks and

holding on to one another too tight for fear
of falling off the edge. The hollow man
lost; the wraith transparent, and

me in my inconsolable stillness. I know they will
crack, these oddly-shaped shells guarding our
guts, but we’ll be different when

the grief is done cooking us. I’ll be a more
concentrated version of myself, and you won’t
be here to wonder what’s wrong.

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