Grief

Where do you go when grief is home? When loss flings you out into the wilderness of pain to fend for yourself. When there is no shelter from the onslaught of mourning.

The pain is relentless.

I am carrying so much grief in my bones. My limbs are heavy under the weight. I am Atlas, holding the world on my back. I am Achelois, tending to the pain of others. But I, too, am bleeding.

I sit at the intersection of all my persecution- of blackness, of woman-ness, of queerness- and wonder how I am to stand. How my spine can carry the weight. How my legs can be trunks, my feet solid roots when the storms will not let me grown down into the soil, will not let me bloom.

I have mourned so many who look like me, who live like me, who love like me. And it feels like there is nothing but sharp loss, sour sweetness and disjointed harmonies, dark echoes where now something is missing.

And so the grief comes to feel like home. When you close its door behind you at the end of the day, severing you from the world, its touch and scent are familiar. You are old friends that find each other in each unfolding trauma, simultaneously clinging to each other and trying to hurl the other away.

When grief is your home, where is your sanctuary?