it's not over; hell, it's just beginning

(dear reader: i am sorry to make this blog so depressing. but i need it. i have no other way. writing by hand takes too long and i cannot keep dumping this shit on my poetry class. i don't know what to do. it isn't over. i'm sorry.)

I wish I could write my way out of this.
I wish I could block out a weekend and feel the entirety at my convenience.
I wish I didn’t feel the need to keep them all on the list.
the nine (now ten) (maybe eleven or twelve or a baker’s dozen)
people who cannot die.
that’s your only job.

of course it was his only job too.
just stay the fuck alive.
for our sakes.

yup, grief is selfish like that.
I grieve you because of the pain you have caused me
and my friends
by leaving our lives.
and yes, I grieve your life.
I grieve the children you will not hold or photograph.
I grieve the cars you will not buy and refurbish.
I grieve the kitty who sleeps in a strange house.
I grieve these parts of your life.

but I also grieve
for the nephew or niece being born
I wonder and worry about the effects this will have on them
to be six months old in the womb
and have your mother struck by this terrible, terrible blow
will you be born bitter?
will you always have a sadness about you?
will they know it came from your uncle micah?
will they tell you the story of how he was abused, how his legs were burnt,
how he, too, suffered insufferable loss?
or will you just know it in your bones?
will you be a quiet child?
you will look like him.
I can already picture your angelic photos.
they haunt me like his.
they are his.
I am sorry for you, tiny unborn person.
sorry for the grief your mama has taken in
sorry we couldn’t shield you even in the womb
from the sorrow of existence.