The Orphan’s Grief

It dreams
In dim daylight hours
How you’ll ring Mom and Dad in the morning
Not yet awake to remember that they’re dead.

It covers
“What do your parents do?”
With a cold, heavy blanket of silence, or
Or “Your folks must be so proud”
With sullenness softly hidden
In an awkward smile.

It sucks dry
All the liveliness of new bones
Grown a year older and fidgeting to celebrate
With balloons and presents and blackberry pie.

It isolates
A human far from the dizzying crowds
Bustling like swarms of bees on hot summer weekends
Indefatigably with an energy obtained
From who knows where.

It removes
Any resolution whatsoever on the war of yourself
Being gravid and spilling with words to tell them
But them not being here to hear you at all.

It introduces
Nature to the wandering soul
To whom it sings through the turning seasons:
I am your home.

It searches
For someone to laud your tenacity
When you’ve mastered this or figured out that
Or certainly won’t try again
What you did yesterday.
Even a whispered syllable would suffice.

It creates
Conversations with trees
Winking at stars, dancing with squirrels
The following of clouds with your fingers
Naming shapes they would have known the names of.

It encourages
Candor with the parents of close friends
Yet their daughter’s scowl and son’s reticence bid you
Get your own pair of battle-axes.
These are taken.

It numbs
All that a body can feel.
There are days when
Only the memory can make a body move.

It cultivates
The gathering places for the dancing balls
Of the deceased after dark;
Quiet exhumations of mysteries only in the
Afterlife you will understand.

It leaves
Ears that hear low sounds
Making you hearken to the stories
You once found simple and boring.
Now they are not so simple anymore.

It pontificates
On the possibility of heaven
Or rather, on the necessity of such a place
To house the once known.

It culminates
Never quite, by an indiscernible fading
Lingering on for the sake of hurt
Then hope, then reverence;
Past years and time it will become a part of you
And a gully of imagination at your side.