Grief redacted
Janet Belding
Grief has one presence, an odd stairwell in an unwritten house. I won’t speak about
individual risers, because there are none. Just metal rungs up to the dusk that is the hallway
Each rung is a different width. Always the wrong size for my feet. Yet I manage.
In the dusty upstairs, the children’s scribbling is looped down the dry erase walls like an EKG.
A toddler’s writing. Illegible. Unintelligible. Your kids no longer live here. But you knew that.
Impersonal beds and dressers inhabit their rooms. They’ve piled most of their belongings in the cellar, waiting to upload into other places. In new rooms everything is new.
You can’t change the impetus for their grief, nor mine. You can’t absolve grief in a single year
or five or ten. I toss the junk mail addressed to you. I sign my solitary name on the checks I write.
Grief has a different foundation. A springboard instead of a ladder. We choose the trajectory: The sky or the bottomless agate of a quarry. Metaphorically, of course. And it goes without saying I wish it were the sky every time.
Janet Belding
Janet Belding lives and writes on Cape Cod. She finds the coastal environment to be an inspiring catalyst for her work. She is a nature-lover, gardener, and enjoys walks in the woods with her dogs. She has been published in “Sky Island Journal," and "LEON Literary Review."