June
June Oh sad sweet June I used to love you Your wide open skies and early summer sunshine and flowers popping up from foliage everywhere Your birdsong and butterflies Your fine gold sunsets But these last two years While you still dazzle me with your effortless splendor Every lush surface is stitched through now with thick black thread in uneven lines A too-large needle jabbed through delicate fibers Seams jagged where the scenery never got pieced back together quite right Like how my tears split the grass beside the stone where he lies buried Plastic pink and purple flowers fractaling into the single red rose they put in the small vase next to the door of the room where he took his last breath Father’s Day then The Day I Lost Him — two gut punches that won’t let me forget And I don’t want to But I miss being her The one without shadows in June
Hey, reader. Sorry it’s been a while. This time of year is damn rough for me, and May was a dumpster fire of a month where I got switched to an Adderall generic that almost completely blocked me creatively — while I was also dealing with a shitstorm of unexpected expenses.
Then as May turned to June, I traveled back east to see family for a socially-packed trip where basically everything reminded me of my dad. I realize more every day that grief is absolutely not a series of predictable stages you move through in order. Grief is more a loop than a line. A corralling hoop full of hooks that circle back to pierce you when you least expect it. And it never ends, only changes.
So thank you for reading all of this and for being here. To those I read, I promise I’ll catch up and get to liking and commenting on all your stuff again soon. I’m on the better meds and feeling more myself, finally. So that’s something.
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I understand, sometimes life is just that. Ragged threadbear and perhaps it is not meant to be stitched up no matter how large/small the needle.
Tapestry. I shared that song with you a while back. Wefts, warps
John
Rebecca,
Take care of your self first