Still Missing

by Chevy Stevens

I need to allow for the possibility I won’t always feel the way I do now, and it’s important to take note of small signs of progress, no matter how insignificant they may seem.

But if somebody is telling you the sky is green, even though you know it’s blue, and they act like the sky is green and they keep saying it’s green day in, day out, like they really believe it, eventually you could start wondering if maybe you’re nuts for thinking it’s blue.

I think people can be so crushed, so broken, that they’ll never be anything more than a fragment of a whole person.

I’m like a wound barely sewn shut, and every time we talk the stitches break, the wound reopens, and I have to sew it back together.

My grief is a windstorm. Sometimes I can stand straight up in it, and when I’m angry, I can lean into it and dare it to blow me over. But other times I need to hunker down, tuck around myself, and let it pummel my back. Lately, I’ve been in hunker-down mode.