An Ode to Leaving

I make peace with death in waves. In a call missed, in the shaky rattled tone of another impermanent’s voice clothed in fear, in the leather-tightened and knotted hands of a mother greater than you and I.

These waves have crashed again, and again, and again since you’ve been gone.

A heightened heartbeat thumps loudly in my sweltered hot ears while a knot in my throat sits just above my heart, shallowing my breath, allowing scarce space for my own life to continue.

It’s heavy. Somehow the drumming rings so tall, yet the cavernous depths trench throughout my sternum, the pain so deep it’s disgusting. A sickeningly cruel joke to have been able to love someone so deeply at all.

I spend many moments remembering your voice as clear as a light blue summer sky. Your favorite color was blue and you always told me not to stare at the sun, it would burn my eyes and turn me blind. I can hear the smirk at the end of each word when you answered the phone, the tone of true love when you sang about the bunnies and you giggled, bumping us on the head.

Mamma, you haven’t answered that phone in a very long time.

I suppose you leaving prepared me for all the different ways they would leave, too. Nothing could ever feel the same.