BECAUSE FAITH IN MY OWN SUFFERING IS LIKE A BURLAP SACK, FILLED WITH BURNT EARTH

In Ethiopia, no stranger to grief,

they bury the dead from

the Lion Air 737 Max 8 crash in

caskets with sacks filled with

the scorched earth from the

nearby crash site, where no one

survived when the plane dropped

like acid rain, a boat anchor out of a

wide open sky. The lightness of a pine

box would simply not do. It would not

satisfy the iron grip that is grief.

In cases like this, we need death to push

back on us a little, we need its gravity

to mean what it says, or else  the whole

damned thing  feels like a fraud.

The way in this part of the world, when there is

no food, mud is sometimes shaped into food,
shaped like cookies, so hands and eyes believe

with much less effort than mouths, hearts and heads

do, so empty bellies will be quiet, and we can sleep.

 This cancer is killing me,

taking many tiny bites until i am gone.

If not the real me, then the me I remembered. 

I should be sicker than I am.

If only the disease would take me by the

shoulders, shake me into the gray doubt

of what is incurable. I need it to punch me

around a little, rough me up,

leave its marks over me,  so my scars can

remind me of where I have been.

Who I am.
What I have to lose. 

What I have already lost. 
 

So I can believe in my own suffering,

So I can bury my own burnt earth in burlap bags,

to feel the missing, so I can feel the demands of loss.

So I can still give a voice to sorrow while I am able.