Ashes

Ring around the roses,
A pocket full of poses,
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

Shhh.
This is the sound of silence
It is the piercing of the skin with a needle, the kind that draws blood
It is the aftermath of an earthquake or disruption of a hurricane
To a city that has only known still ground
It is there in the ashes that survive
The debris left behind
The sorrow lingering in the air
It is the final beep of a heart monitor before a passing
It was the stiffness in the air, the pause in my heartbeat
The free falling when I heard that you had died.
How??

I have repeated it like an anthem.
Like a ballad's song on its last dying note
Commandment to still my racing heart
Rubbing it softly as though it could erase the pain
Arresting tears that refused to be held hostage.
How do you contain what has refused to surrender?
They say that there are seven stages of grief.
I have journeyed through all seven versions of this hell.
And there is no light at the end of this tunnel
No you. No prize for this fight.
Only blood.
And tears.
And death.
Like the second breaking.

There is a breaking that feels like you're underwater
Like the floors beneath your feet are caving in
Giving way
Call me the walking dead.
These hands gripped myself as I cried you back to life.
As I washed away blood that screamed of empty promises
As I wondered how many more deaths made for a rite of passage.

Shock
I woke up drowning in silence,
Gasping for a name that would never answer back.
The air was thick with a lie I couldn't swallow
This can't be real.
My hands trembled as I reached for yesterday,
But yesterday was already dead,
And I was left holding the cold echo of its bones.

Denial
I stitched tears into prayers, dragged my heavy feet to the bottom of my bed.
Cleaned my tears. Rocked hope back into my shaking bones.
Gone is a word I do not speak.

Anger
I burned.
I turned my fists into questions and threw them at the sky
I spit venom at sympathy,
Turned cold at the warmth of concern.
They say anger is a stage.
But I call it a home with no windows,
Stay long enough and you forget the color sun.

Bargaining
I whispered deals into the dark,
Promises that smelled like desperation.
If I had just called, if I had just been there,
Maybe, maybe, more maybe
Until,
One day, I got up.
I let the wind kiss my face in the form of a sweet breeze.
like it was trying to remind me
I am still here.
And here still exists.
I did not call it healing.
I did not call it hope.
But I called it something.
And something was better than nothing.

Absence does not always make the heart fonder.
You are not just a name carved in stone
You are in the stories I tell,
In the kindness I give,
In the way I stop to taste the rain.

And when my time comes,
when I, too, become an echo,
I know I will see them again.
I will run to them, arms open,
And they will smile and say,
"We have been waiting."

Because ashes are not just endings.
They are proof of a fire that once burned,
Proof that something bright, something warm,
Something unforgettably brilliant was here.
So I commemorate you in this poem.
Bring you to life with these words.
Call you out like Lazarus and make a home in my memories.
You were here.
You were here.
You were here.
I will not forget.

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down