Pick Up Your Feet

The taste of the dream
like fudge on my tongue.
All of it gone, the dream of us.

Where does it go
the dream of love that is gone?
Are we loving in some other world
where the ocean of sadness doesn’t
grey out all the brightness?

Why must I stay in this place
where the loved one passes on the street
and we greet as if
the dream had never been?
Grief was leaving me alone,
now suddenly it stabs
as if it’s yet the day it came.
To endure it again, I won’t
make it through, I thought
I was whole again but maybe
that was just a joke.

We pass on the street,
and when I get home, I think
it was a dream, the quickness,
the image of the loved one’s face. I think
it was a quivering in my mind
that didn’t really happen.
No longer can I tell what world is real,
the loss has made a shaking
of my day into glassy shards
reflecting crazy shapes of light.
Can I trust my sight?

I don’t want to trust the sight
of the one I am not with.
That face on the street smiles soft
in each shattered piece of thought
that cuts my heart.
Who is the one who walks on by?
She must be me but
how can I believe in her.
The picture of us passing on the street,
as if the dream had never been,
feels false, misshapen, wrong.

What doesn’t seem to go away
are the sudden bolts of grief and pain.
Here it is again, hello.
Knowing so, I have to
find a way to live.
They say that down the road
may wait more love.
Come along then, Grief.
Pick up your feet.

©Susa Silvermarie 2023