Sunday 19 June 2022

'The Way I Choose to Grieve May Look to Some Like Dying' 
by Laurie Marshall

When I pulled my heart from my chest and left it cooling on the marble counter, you asked me why. What did it mean when I filled the empty cavity with yellow dandelions and blue dog-foot violets? What would I do when they wilted and died? 

I know the world will call me broken. Putting words to my silence, they will whisper their own fables about the heartless mother. The mother with moss and mushrooms pressing against her buttons and crabgrass tendrils slinking out from under her sleeves. 

You asked me what I expected to happen now—how the absence of my heart will change anything, anything at all. Letting it shrivel and rot will not reanimate the child I lost. I could try to explain, couldn’t I? Perhaps I should draw a picture or make a numbered list. I could explain until my throat is raw and bleeding, and yet, there is no way to understand unless the blood no longer pumping through the thing is your own.

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