Drowning

Grief is a lungful of water

At first it only burns

Then it drowns

I told you I was drowning

You looked away and said,

“Everyone drowns somehow.”

You shrugged like loss was law

A tax we all must pay

As if knowing fire is coming

Makes it easier to stay

⸻

But tonight you are the life raft

For someone else’s storm

Your words are soft as gauze

While I weather mine alone

⸻

And I watch from the shore

As the tide pulls me down

Still ankle-deep in sorrow

While you tend someone else’s crown

Maybe his wounds are older

But mine still bleed unseen

You hold his pain like porcelain

Mine breaks behind the screen

⸻

You wrap him in your comfort

The kind I dared not ask

You carry his mourning gently

While I wear my silence like a mask

⸻

Would it take my body sinking

For you to see I’m gone?

Or do you only grieve the ones

Who no longer need to hold on?

⸻

And I watch from the shore

As the tide pulls me down

Still ankle-deep in sorrow

While you tend someone else’s crown

Maybe his wounds are older

But mine still bleed unseen

You hold his pain like porcelain

Mine breaks behind the screen

⸻

If I slipped beneath the silence

Without a single cry

Would you cast a line too late

Only when the sea ran dry?

⸻

Grief is a lungful of water

It burns, then it blinds, then it swallows

And I wonder who you’ll mourn

When there’s no more air to borrow