Published in Emerson College's Concrete Literary Magazine
Grief seduces with her penchant for heat.
She creeps kisses up each lover’s spine until that burning mouthful
Where the pulse runs low and wide enough to bathe in.
There, she clasps her darling’s neck in ecstasy,
Branding that flesh with salted claws and wineblood
Grasping deeper until all fury is thick with the rot of desire
And the stench of her own fear is lost on another’s skin.
She is born motherless.
Drags herself instead, from the depths of a timeless hunger
To clutch at the earth and drink until milkteeth snap,
Until the sea kisses that feeding ground and claims Grief as her own.
But it is an empty parenthood.
The sea does not sing lullabies for her children.
She eats their terror, licks the light from their faces,
Leaves them sharp, icy, and loveless.
Grief will stand alone when the waves rise to swallow the sky.
By then, her lovers will have bled into a dark smear;
The pleasure will have soured to loathing and the fear to silence.
She will write her own death in the cold,
Let it twist a child’s fear back into being
Let it scream light until she hears the thread of a mother’s song.
And when the sea has stolen every last heartbeat to cling to,
Grief will place that death on her tongue and taste an entire lifetime.
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