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Stage 7: Schizophrenia
I saw his voice.
I smelled his shadow.
My love, he said,
I did not want to leave you.

Stage 15: Widow Brain
You know when you walk into a room
and forget why?
It’s like that—except
I know what I’ve forgotten: me.

Stage 1: Denial
I am on the landing
halfway up
halfway down
the stairs.

I remember eating dinner.

Bob, his snout over the top stair
stares.

My husband could be

upstairs at his desk
killing demons in WarCraft
downstairs in his chair
watching Master Chef.

Stage 48: Dammit
He was right,
He did do more dishes.

Stage 23: Self-Medicating at Denny’s with Carbs
10-inch plate
8-inch pancakes
butter, syrup
teabag bleeding
onto napkin

Stage 27: Despair
Joan Didion calls it
the vortex—
a vibrating shadow at the horizon edge
connects to a memory of you.
I drown.

Stage 20: Joy
I sit on the cracked, bulbous, coffee-brown
leather chair he moved in with,

Bob asleep with his head on my thigh.
His small black body between my legs.

You know the rule:
you cannot wake the dog.

I will sit here as long as I can
until I have to pee.

Stage 100: Psychosis
I am paying $90 a month
for a dead guy’s cell phone.

Stage 79: Progress
Thinking about thinking about
dating.
More than a day
without crying.
I actually liked that movie,
walked 10,000 steps,
wrote a poem about something
other than my dead husband.

 

Previously published in:

  • snapdragon: a journal of art & healing, the grief series: depression, acceptance. winter 2021, issue 7.4
  • The Thieving Magpie, Issue 2, Summer 2018; https://thievingmagpie.org/vanessa-poster-three-poems/
  • Grief Dialogues The Book: Stories on Love and Loss, Beth Rahe Balas and Elizabeth Coplan, editors. 2018
  • The Best of the Poetry Salon (2016-2018), Curated by Tresha Faye Haefner, Edited by Allen Rubinstein
  • I’ll Have Wednesday, Volume 4, Los Angeles Poets & Writers Collective, Bambaz Press, Los Angeles, 2017
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