Grief casts complex shadows
over the wilting body
You feel the fingers grasping
as sirens rise again
This fatalistic ritual
an energy made negative
and stomach knotted up
by such unhelpful thoughts

Pain rips at your sails
thunderous and wild
is it the body breaking down
a message poorly translated
The shrieking of absence
cuts deep into the gut
those hands twist and grip
the cycle begun again

Skidding down the rabbit hole
of mystery pain and anxiety
hyper real and burning
it’s eating you alive
Those phantom hands rewiring
your mind only to worry
assumptions dire and grave
all roads lead to that place

These misdirected signals
all those black and deadly things
speak with knife-like voices
plunged into your chest
Taking you to a place
maybe part of you would like to go
to be proved right
your fears bleakly justified

Those phantom hands
threaten to poison everything 
but they will not take you 
Where can we draw the line
Which hell is the body
and which is in the ailing mind
My real hands catch the tears
falling from my mother’s eyes…
 

[2023]