My hand has begin to repel writing about grief, 

but what do I do when my body is another metaphor 

for a border, that grief crosses like scattered 

moths from a section of my body to another, & 

it sketched itself on my face like a painting of 

acrylic on canvas. I count my dead by counting 

the lines on my palm, & after each mention it

whets my wounds into a fresh one. When the 

morning opens a new book of grief on the library 

of this body, I cram the first page with frozen tears 

the size of pineapple chunks & when it’s noon I 

stare at the sun to keep my body warm from the 

cold of grief. Here, they say nobody slips from 

the fingers of grief, you are either caught between 

its ten fingers or pressed like a foliage into an

Oshibana to create a perfect picture of grief.

& let's assume this poem is flowing like a rivulet 

In search of its origin, & I — a caterpillar climbing 

a tree branch to spin myself with a chrysalis, to

morph into an airborne thing & wield the power

of the sky. In this space where everything has a 

name, I grew like a poplar from my mother & 

enter Into a song as a vowel to reverberate between 

mouths, to exist as a prominent thing where grief

is trapped in nothingness – to save my body from wilting

like the yellow leaves on a tree ladened by Autumn.

I remember dreaming about peeling my body off grief 

with a knife like peeling the skin of an apple, but is this

not an image of grief luring me into masochism? 

& What is this masochism If not a mind corroded

by grief? For us swimming inside the Nile of grief,  

may the Lord build us an ark to sail out of this grief unscratched.