Souvenirs of Grief

these days, i imagine myself as an archaeologist 
digging for old songs from my grandmother’s grave, 

exhuming the fading melodies slipping out of my lips 
and the knotted lyrics that she never got to untangle.

is this what it means to grow with grief?
to wake up one morning           
picking after forgotten dreams,

to look into a mirror         
and watch guilt stare back 
in places you never knew you housed.  

to hold your head                  
under a running shower 
and watch your childhood scars bloom into butterflies. 

is this what it means to inherit pain—
a man walks into his childhood home,

unearths the pictures he never burned and waits
until his grandmother spreads her face over the dining table. 

he tries, he soaks in every hue she’s doused in 
but till when will [ he burn] [he go numb] as she fizzles into a smile. 

then, he sees his skin as a reminder of ties knotted by blood, 
of cracked walls that still wear fresh chances for closure. 

this is where her overgrown grave double as a bed  
where his qualms too come to rest,  

where new memories bloom, enough 
to transform his purple paranoia into a morning sky—

vast, orange, with warmth seeping out of every cloud. 
miracles and metaphors 

vi

Lord, grant me the patience to watch grief live,
the strength to water it into peace, 
& the courage to inject this into the spaces 
in between my ribs.

v

here, i—a poet’s [silly] prayer, another 
unfading metaphor, 
snakes/ cockroaches/ day/ night/ anything that wields
the art of molting. 

iv

seconds 
before the sun bids the world goodbye, i try, 
i savor every ray of light it spreads, then i sprinkle them into 
empty words, into silent prayers. 
perhaps this time, my tongue 
can dissolve some weights. perhaps
i too am the irresistible eye of wonder.

iii

i drench myself 
in some colors of the rainbow, 
my veins heavily bloated with their several shades, 
i—a fluid path carrying more meaning, an 
opaqueness finally fading. 

ii

home beckons at my feet again, and 
my legs wear the road, then my hands, then
my eyes, then my body.  i puddle
in a bus, then a market, then a cemetery,
then a sunflower-littered trail. 

i

i swear, i’m not writing this poem for solace
& the blade song my skin hums isn’t a distress 
call. nothing here is claustrophobic – this hollow,
this is where i discover more about this place 
than just crumpled sheets, cold trails, and scattered ashes.

Note: Grief transforms into peace, and asks: how do we carry our ancestors’ pain toward healing?