gravedigger

dear sarah,
i wonder

if sometimes you can still feel the weight of your bed sheet
around your neck. heaven knows there were days i could count every thread.
last night i was cleaning up my desk, and i found the scissors
i used to crack my skin open four years ago
and when i went to throw them out, it felt like moving mountains

or graves. if you don’t know yet, you’ll learn that some types of grief
leave scars—some ghosts don’t know how to stay buried.
you will stumble through the rest of your life wondering if you will
one day forget how it feels to toe the edge of the cliff and turn the other way.

the answer is no. there is a precipice. there will always
be a precipice. a part of you will always want to throw yourself
over the edge. somehow, you never will. no one will notice.

to them, your race is over. you have cleared the last hurdle.
you have gone one month, three months, six months, a year without
turning your blue blood red. you have won your war. congratulations,
you have won.

i heard that today you opened the curtains in your room again,
and i hope the sun illuminated every freckle on your cheeks. people
like you and me, we deserve that kind of radiance. we’ve had enough
cracked concrete and overcast skies for a lifetime.

i’m glad you’re trying to come home.
when you get there, i swear there will be a place already set for you.
no one will be able to talk, they’ll have lost their voices from
how hard they were cheering for you. you were never as alone as you felt.

you were never as alone as you felt.

when you find yourself forgetting that, it helps to hold someone’s hand.
i’ve become an expert on things like that, on throwing out
my scissors, on visiting the cemeteries in my body and
placing irises on their graves.

i paint my nails in lilacs and pale blues and bright pinks
and never black and i always try to listen to one song everyday that
i can feel in my bones. when it takes me more than an hour
to get out of bed, i take the long way home.

i heard that today you put on two layers of clothes
instead of three, and i wanted to tell you that one day you will push up
your sleeves and forget to be ashamed of your own survival.
where you go from here is an empty road. it’s all about learning how
to drive again  after you swore you were done.

i will write to you again, some time, i promise.
i hope this finds you always in

good health,
and smiling.