How It Feels to Lose Someone

If someone had been gone this long
the authorities will have presumed
them dead.

So I threw you a funeral.

The kind with 
no casket and no body.

No sympathies,
no condolences,

no simple white lilies.

No one’s wearing black,
no one’s lighting candle.

A devastation
only I
can feel.

Although sometimes
I do wish you were dead.
So I could slice this sadness

like a cake and share the pieces 
with someone else.

Perhaps with your mother,
or your sister,
or some stranger across the street
who’s heard good things about you.

The day you died,

I wish I could mark it.

Carve it into a tree,
scribble it on a wall,
let the grief settle somewhere
that isn’t always me.

But I can’t.
You’re still breathing somewhere—
whole, content, 
and perhaps fulfilled.

And sometimes it feels unfair
but other times

it feels deserved.

For all the strings in the past—
that I cut without blinking,
I’ve finally learned
what it feels like
to lose someone.