Imagine a grief like this:
long lean empty arms,
a runner’s legs marking unfinished miles.
Sunday days, stretches of desert.
Drawn out sentences.
Streams of consciousness
open to nothingness but
dusty roads prickled with green
finger-like conical trees, living, but dead-looking,
sharp and pointed.
No touching, no softness, no healing.
Amazingly unnaturally natural.
Haunting signs of grief.
A cactus,
Black-threaded stitches puncture my happiness,
the ridges on the desert’s prize:
the saguaro of grief.