Grief/Love (Poem)

My sadness is a thing I carry inside my chest 

It takes up the place where my heart should be 

The empty cavern inside my chest leaves me hallow 

It leaves me craving the warmth my blood should give me

The hollow feeling smells like old paper that hasn’t been touched by human hands

Or like a cold like the day when it should snow 

My heart is an empty dollhouse where the dolls still lay after being used 

Am I only ever supposed to be an amount of grief? 

What is it then if all I can ever do is weep? 

What if the only things in life I add up to are a heap of memories like dirty laundry and an overflowing pool of tears that flow from me like a faucet? 

Grief is the side-effect of love that is said at the end of the commercial 

You know when the announcer is rapid-firing the side-effect that most definitely can’t kill you

Just so you know… love can kill you 

But love can also be beautiful 

Like sunrises… or sunsets if you aren’t awake early enough to see the sunrises 

I think love looks a lot like mixed things 

My captain crunch next to your frosted shredded wheat 

My shea butter body wash next to your Irish spring shampoo 

My laundry is in the same basket as yours 

Our dishes in the kitchen sink at the same time

I think love looks a lot like mixed things 

I think it means tangling ourselves so deeply with one another we can’t go five feet without finding evidence of the other's existence in our lives 

I think love looks like lazy afternoons and late nights 

And love looks exactly how they are supposed to when they finally arrive 

And love will also look exactly how they are supposed to when they leave

And I suppose we will just have to be okay with that 

Because if I’ve learned anything over the course of this poem and this life 

Love is never wasted 

Even when it turns to grief