Threshold

Grief does not knock.

It shoulders the door,
tracks mud across the
floorboards.

I do not follow it,
but I hear it moving,
opening drawers,
touching the small things
I meant to keep untouched.

At night,
it lies down beside me, unbidden.
Its breath is mine,
its pulse, a stone in my chest.

I think of you
the way lungs think of air
while drowning.

I think of you.

Grief. It does not knock.
It is not welcome.
Yet here I sleep, time again,
wrestling in its arms.