Stillborn

The window sweats; the frame forgets
how it once held shape.
Night splatters like a butcher’s coat,
blotting out the porch lamp’s gape.

A moth bursts against the glow,
its wings gone to pulp in the rain.
Your heartbeat: a rope spun from nettle vine,
I – I gripped until my palms bled.

Your chair unrocked our regret,
scraping a sound no one needs.
Your onesie curls stiff in the drawer,
smelling of wet bedrock and old rain –
I don’t know why I still open it.

There’s a map of you soaked into the floorboards,
paid out slow in leaking stains.
Grief ferments in the gut of the walls;
even the spiders swing drunk from the panes.

The nails don’t stay put anymore.
The beams creak curses.
The pipes mutter names I can’t –
Can’t –
say out loud.

I carry your absence like salt
spilling from a torn sack,
working into the seams of everything I own.

It devours the hinges.
It scars the photographs,
scraping faces clean off.

It settles on my tongue
when I try to –
when I –
it settles.

I carry your absence like a cracked urn of ash,
spilling grit through quivering fingers.
It sifts.
It seeps.
Clings to the seams of my coat,
my skin,
my every shallow breath.

It grinds the fan blades to a brittle whine –
screech, snap, groan –
damn doors I can’t shut.
It smears the photographs,
your face a blur,
a ghost scratched out by time’s nails.
I trace the frames.
My hands shake.
The glass is cold.

Your absence pools in my mouth,
heavy,
like tears swallowed too long.
I try to speak –
I –
I choke.
Words dissolve,
a sob stumbles,
falls.

Your name –
…your name –
unspoken,
it hums like a canticle I can’t sing,
a melody breaking,
notes tripping over grief’s jagged edge.
It tastes of flood-wet earth,
sharp,
aching,
clinging like a prayer I can’t release.

I hold it.
Still.
Always.
Mine.