Aug 27, 2020
The Thing Is
BY ELLEN BASS
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
#gayass poetry#grief hangs from me as overripe fruit clings thickly to overburdened branches.#the sorrow of feeling pain not from the first hundred thousand arrows but from the final one.#life has shown me that i can survive as a bloodless and weakened thing.#what i hold between my palms is my own face#what i sew to my heraldry is my heart rampant.#ellen bass#the thing is
