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SCENTS OF GRIEF
Slowly, it crept in, the world outside, the sound
of the ice-cream truck playing The Entertainer
as they took my Father's body down stairs.
It was the first song I learned on the piano.
Grief is confusing. I began to see sounds and hear
light.
This is what I heard: the red sound of the train on
Main Street,
the crosshatched blue of babies burping, lilac curtain
sounded like a school
of birds. The sound a pillow makes when it falls on
the hard floor,
the color of eggshells. Sound is the last sense to
leave. So I said
I love you I love you a thousand times like a reflex,
love the last word I heard pass through his lips.
Years
passed. One lives in the jaundice yellow, grief.
One
day, the gifts of the Indian summer, like rose water
arrive, unwrapped. Autumn's sun fickle,
an understudy really, waiting in the wings.
Lisa Grunberger is a poet, essayist, performer and
teacher. Her work has appeared in the Baffler and The
Paterson Literary Review. She's currently working on a
one-woman show entitled A History of Chance. |