Grave Matter

by Karina Halle

Grief is funny like that. It lives alongside you, sometimes in silence, and then a random thought, or memory, or smell will punch through you like a fist, your bleeding heart in its grasp, and you have to relive it all over again.

“But I don’t see the way out,” I whisper. “I don’t see how I’ll ever stop being too much for someone. Too impulsive, too brash, too reckless, too self-centered, too cold, too sensitive, too much. Too me.”

Like he’s becoming one of them.

“To pin you down like a butterfly. To marvel at your beauty but to know that you are caught, that you are mine.”