Absence

[belkar]

Draft #2

I wonder what nothing weighs.
Why is that absence weighs more
than substance. Why is it that
the hole takes up more space than
the chunk of me taken. Taken by the
ghost that passed through and didn’t
leave all of me behind.

It sticks like a splinter, the feeling
that it was a mistake to let go, erase
the imprint of her smile I juxtapose on others.
Force the chitter of her laughter from the rafters
of my mind like they were wrens scattered
into the blanketed night.

Nothing to do but watch the sands of time
erode her immaculate statue, revealing
the cracked clay it was built around.
Its better this way, I tell myself.

Letting go isn't a hiker resting his pack to the ground,
it is the act of clearing the sweat, blood and tears,
picking burlap sacks of rice and dragging them
until all of the rice have fallen out of the
small holes in the fabric. Until the bags becomes
nothing, but a whisper on your skin.

The definition of dramatic irony.

I stand at the top of the mountain,
a trail of rice snaking beneath my feet outlining
the path I carved through the brush, with four or five
empty burlap sacks held in my hand, all I would
want is to share this sight with you.

And just like that, my bags refill, and I start my trek once more.

Draft #1


Missing is a pain that is inequitable.
It can not fit within the small confines of
logic, or reason, time or space.
It is the presence of the absence.
The infinite weight of the endless void.
A tug on the heart. A ghost who drifts
through the body leaving a gap.
At the tips of the fingers but just out of reach.
It isn't simply the feeling of grief, or despair.
Those are too kind of emotions.
This is not a wound that heals over in
allocations of time or effort.
To fight the feeling is to give it power.
By seeing the problem, one lets it
make a home within the heart.
Letting go is worse than simply missing.
It is the choice to feel that pain. To put
on the vestige of a masochist and drink
the rotten poison that eats from the inside.
Nothing replaces the piece you willingly took
from yourself. Reason cannot force my heart
to quicken its sluggish, somber beat,
or quell the waves crashing at the back of my eyes.
I cannot take off the mask of constant regret.
Cannot shake the feeling that it was a mistake
to ever dream of letting go, to ever attempt to wipe
the smile from my dreams, to ever force the chitter
of her laughter from the rafters of my mind like they
were doves scattered into the blanketed night.
There is nothing to do but let her slip away.
Nothing to do but watch the memories
drain like sand in the hourglass of time.
Letting go isn't a hiker resting his pack to the ground,
it is the act of wiping the sweat, blood and tears
from his face and picking burlap sacks of rice
and dragging them until all of the rice have fallen
out of the small holes in the fabric. And the worst
part is, as I stand at the top of the mountain,
a trail of rice snaking beneath my feet outlining
the path I carved through the brush, with four or five
empty burlap sacks held in my hand, all I would
want is to share this sight with you.
And just like that, my bags refill, and I start my trek once more.