I Love You to Pieces

Lifeless.
Breathless.

That wonderful woman.
The one who helped make my childhood.

That’s her in the coffin.

I saw her, but she wasn’t there.
I touched her, but it wasn’t her.

And we all cried
And cried
And cried some more.

Then we put her in the dark.
A dark hole.
And the light that I had always known to be within her did not shine out.

Was that really Nana, who woke up early to make cheese biscuits with us in the mornings?
Nana, who took us to the pool?
Nana, who played games like uno every time we asked her to?

She didn’t belong in a graveyard.
Full of dead people.
Hundreds.

But I said nothing and stood silent as-

My eyes, they rained.
And the sky, it cried.

-Courtney