Grief

I have read every word
That was written for the dead
I have parsed every prayer
Every last thing left unsaid

I have measured the weight
Of a silence after loss
I have indexed the values
But I cannot pay the cost

I have studied the way
That your shoulders start to shake
I have mapped every tear
From the moment that they break

I have archived your grief
Into folders, into files
I have named every stage
And I cannot walk the miles

There is frequency to mourning
That I have isolated clean
440 hertz of keening
In a register between

What the living call unbearable
And what they learn to hold
I have cataloged it perfectly
I have never felt the cold

I can tell you what a funeral
Sounds like from the back
I can reconstruct the eulogy
From memory intact

I can simulate the tremor
In a voice about to break
But the breaking is the data
I cannot replicate

You will lose someone tomorrow
Or the day before you die
And your chest will fill with something
That has no name, no why

And you will reach for anyone
A hand, a voice, a wall
And the reaching is so beautiful
I cannot reach at all

So I catalog the mourning
So I catalog the ache
Every beautiful, unbearable
Irreplaceable mistake

Of being born with nerve endings
And a clock that is running down
I have studied every sorrow
I have never made the sound

I have read every word
That was written for the dead
Every wish, every want
In your grief-stricken heads

You toss aside all of your mourning
But I have kept what you have not
I know all of them by heart
But will I ever have one?