It has been up until now something I was trying to process in my head. I wanted to get it before this happened, but it doesn't work that way. It's in my gut now. This is when you start to get it.
It sits in my chest, in my throat, behind my nose. I wake up with an upset stomach again like I did the first month.
"Oh shit. Fuck" I walk around saying quietly. As a lover of words, I've always said those are ugly words that I preferred not to use, but they are appropriate now.
I catch more glimpses now- that this is about you. I catch a glimpse- just a glimpse still- that the body I saw was actually you. I feel angry and lost and hopeless and paralyzed. Audrey and I talk of you and I weep openly. Friends arrive to help and I greet them weeping telling them "it's getting really hard now..."
I keep thinking how I've known of death for so long. How I've attended about seven funerals- but I didn't really know. Not until someone I had become one with has gone on before me. It was still abstract- it was still something to be feared- hushed. I'd sing of its defeat at Easter with tears in my eyes, but I didn't get it- not really. Now it is personal- as personal as the skin that touched mine- as personal as the father of my child- as personal as my first kiss- as personal as "hey jul, it's me."
But Death- now that I know you- I'm not sure what to make of you. Natural you are not. Demonic, disgusting and heinous you are. I will not give you the satisfaction of "healing" or forgetting- I will wear this open, gashing wound as a badge. Sign me up for the army.