THE GEOGRAPHY OF LOVE (life, grief, loss) (c)

A poem by Patty Beecham. …And I hug my son so deeply that I press him into my chest… Until his bones are squeezed in between my ribs… Until his skin and his pores become my flesh, and our bones calcify. I wrap both of my arms around him, and hold him, and breathe him in… When your son leaves you, it’s like a part of your heart breaks off, And carves into the ocean, and you know you can never stick it back. He becomes an island, and your heart becomes a broken jigsaw of isthmuses And estuaries, and jaggedness Where once was smooth. *** When your parent dies, gravity ceases to exist, and you float, weightlessly without direction, like that party balloon drifting across the roofs and houses of strangers, No one to hold you: the weight of all those memories binding you together And ungrounded, your heart becomes a sinkhole, with No one to pull you back to earth. *** When you find that person who loves you, it crushes everything, like a thousand volcanoes erupting, to the point where you can’t breathe: to the point where you can’t think; You explore the broad brown paddocks and wild plains of his shoulders. His granite arms. His breath becomes your breath, his thoughts become your thoughts, and you both move like glaciers, as time stands still. The weight of mountainous love is too much to bear. Such alps and valleys of life. *** When you lose a child, you lose everything. You lose the future. You lose the life you would have had together. You lose hope. You lose love. There is only blackness and stillness and deep, dark waters that make you dog-paddle in oceans of grief; until your arms flail with tiredness, and your legs have no kick. There is no other option but to sink to the bottom of the world without a sound. *** When you lose a friend, you leave the door open for loneliness to come in and make itself at home. You lose your laugh, and it’s replaced by the sound of a wine bottle being twisted open and poured; and it’s a desert. It’s the Nullarbor of our lives; flat and featureless, without rhythm, or bumps. Every day is an effort to step one foot in front of the other, and walk that dryness and not fall over the cliffs, to find what’s around the corner, when there are no corners, just straight lines, leading to the dusty horizon. That damn horizon, and the setting sun. (c) Winner of The Professor Bruce Dawe, AO, Patronal Prize. #Prism43 #Iamwriting #Poetry