does grief fade in outrage?
in seething hurt where my boundaries
conflict with yours?
or does grief merely go mute in the outrage
seeing how I stepped out of my care
to take care of you?
in the exposing of how desperately
I wanted to love you
that in my longing I lost you
or does outrage escort me?
to meet how the web of possibilities
of us being together
are being torn into memory
and how I so long for something otherwise
outrage this love in protest
though I realize,
you were not a project
asking to be supported
but a work of art
that never wanted to be diminished
into an idea
ideas only an abstraction of love's image
love's image reflected in
gazing upon a river of loss
is that reflection that I feel grief for?
the ripples of memory that wave to me
"hello" and "goodbye"?
Or do I feel grief in greeting
the love no longer being
able to sent to you in a familiar way
or bending down
to look at the reflection
do I feel grief for the many yous
who never quite reflect me clearly?
who never quite reflected the depth
of my longings to be known
and to be seen?
or does grief arrive
when I reflect and see
how I wanted you to see your reflection
only to realize how hurting that would be
as I know your reflection to be
a place of dissatisfaction
as even in a drought
even with a tourniquet blocking
the river of love we once shared, my tears
renew a reflection of you
a reflection bejeweled in tears
as rivers of you cry and flow through me
because I know every moment
when I met myself reflected
and forgot that the reflection
was me
I wonder if grief
a daring to love within
death and loss and absence
is love transmuted to a protective ache?
This pain that longs for change
as I am coming to know
by reflecting on love,
I see myself
I see myself
in those glass panes
where pain reclaims
the love I have often misplaced
the love that abundantly spilled outward
and forgot its caving inward
this caving chasm
in which all reflections
are a collapse in distance
of separation losing its meaning
of grief, rage, and torment hospiced
into waterfalls of mourning
I find love
I recognize the love
behind these moments of pain