The Thing About Grief

in its first shining hours

is how it worms into

the hole left by worry

and fills it up. The

quiet becomes

permissive before

it turns oppressive.

You find yourself

awed by your own

breath—how it

continues without

effort despite, despite.

The sheets are cool

before they are cold.

The trees are lowing

like cattle in an old song.

You would like to place

your hands in dough—

to knead something

without needing anything.

But when you reach for

the pantry door, your

joints soften, the atoms

shift. In an instant, you

become the wrong kind

of flower.

for Tybee (2004-2021)

Julie Marie Wade is the author of 13 collections of poetry, prose, and hybrid forms, most recently Skirted: Poems (The Word Works, 2021) and the book-length lyric essay, Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing (The Ohio State University Press, 2020). Her collaborative volumes include The Unryhmables: Collaborations in Prose (Noctuary Press, 2019), co-authored with Denise Duhamel, and the forthcoming Telephone: Essays in Two Voices (Cleveland State University Press, 2021), co-authored with Brenda Miller. A winner of the Marie Alexander Poetry Series and the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir, Julie teaches in the creative writing program at Florida International University. She is married to Angie Griffin and lives in Dania Beach.