how long is the longing

I've no right to this grief, and yet here I hold it with me

at the stove, and at the steering wheel, and even

in the small smiling moments with my Joy.

Heavy in my hands and on my heart, the inescapable gravity

that nothing can change how life is forever changed.

There is only forward on a path overgrown with time,

and now subsumed by the tide of death.

Where once I could look back to peer through a tangle of wild

memory, recalling whatever image I chose,

there's now only a bleakness so wide it may as well be forever.

Even if I’m still until the water recedes, there will only be, perhaps,

an unkind stretch of pebbles and discarded bones. I imagine.

How l o n g is the longing for a never known thing.

Maybe, if I turn my back on looking back, I could be whole

again, retrieve a soul split across shores or timelines,

ever wondering and wandering. I wonder if I'm happier there,

in those unpursued possibles. Or thinner.