Sublimation

The snow keeps visitors away from the cemetery
But that is when I feel the pull the strongest
I need to brush the flakes off her grave
To make sure her wreath has not tipped over
To bring a new flower, a sliver of life, to her small spot

The plastic stand spells her name
and the name of the local funeral home.
It is more than insufficient – it’s antagonizing in its impermanence
Because she is permanently gone.
We cannot give her a proper gravestone
until the ground thaws out.

The most unnatural kind of ending
Usurped the most natural kind of beginning
Death and birth got their signals mixed
And Tinsley was the collateral damage

My world has become forever
upside down and cross-eyed
and tone deaf and anemic.

Impenetrable amounts of ice build up
and winter beats on
as pockets of warmth transform the snow into fog
and the fog sends the water back into the sky
without anybody seeing

(the changing forms confuse
the direction of my anguish ).

Someday I will know, face to face
Why I must stumble around this graveyard

But not in this season

No, not just yet.