cw: death, grieving
just months after my grandfather's death in 2003,
cancer took reign of my grandmother's last breath;
in 2018, an orca carried her dead calf a thousand miles
across the pacific northwest for seventeen straight days

the dutiful grief is a stubborn dinner date
picking off your plate for bites you’ve saved
the dinner table is a ghost you must stop ignoring
a bellyful of seawater is a stone soup for your crown

and what of teeth-clenched grief
gripping the last fifteen years with might
is it sanctimonious to preach relief
when the moths have feasted on your sorrows

only for the best of us to turn forgetful
of the dizzying time we’ve spent sitting in our islands
and how spiteful we are of their days and months
next to our years that only seem to curve and take

who dictates, then, the dissonance of half-truths
or the near-ritualistic pulling of time 
to delay a surmised reality
hunger is a mistress scavenging ashes for dregs
Audrey L. Reyes (she/her) is a poet, digital content specialist, and former early childhood educator whose favorite workplace activity is raising hell. Her work appears or is forthcoming in QUINCE Magazine, NECTAR POETRY, DEAR, Anti-Heroin Chic, superfroot magazine, and Marías at Sampaguitas. She resides in Manila, Philippines.
header: Wonderlane via Unsplash