The Infinity of Grief

I’m so mad at this world I can taste blood–
like the blood I kissed
drooling from her open mouth,
just minutes after emerging from my body
doll-like and lifeless
(why didn’t they warn us her lips would be so red?!)

I cannot bear the thought
of breathing the same air as these tenderfoots-
the ones that are too callow and ingenuous
to really think about what it means
to have the worst experiment in love
performed on you

without warning
without anesthesia
without hope
of ever being whole again

to be shoved into a world
uninhabitable and unknown
and lonely

I stare at a picture of myself from last fall–
when her death was just an anxious glimmer
that perched in the back of my brain,
and not some actual reality

my eyes squint at the picture, and there is nothing recognizable.
it was such a long, long time ago,

and yet nothing,
compared to the infinity of grief
that lies
ahead.