GRIEF Poem: Dissolving Fillers, by Elena Talia

Some feelings you can never get back.
Like standing outside between two closely parked parallel cars in a deeply cold night complete
with thin flurries pummeling down from the south west.

“I don’t understand why someone would start a weed habit at 40 years old” my sister Tamara
told me over the phone a few months ago. No names were named – nevertheless the truth hung
there like a cross between us.

What’s annoying is, she’s right. One contract in Colorado Springs and now I gorge on the
heavenly earthen roar of flames aflash in the pan of my throat. Wars in my head…ended. Ability
to trust in rhythms of the creation, restored.

200 mg of Fluvoxamine straight up with a twist and a slim few inhalations of an organic joint –
ethically sourced in NY State – and I am spinning plates on various planes within the
multiverse.

It shocks all three of us that having a grand child has brought out the best in you. We barter
confessional stories between us about times our pain went unacknowledged or dismissed.
Our villanelles’ refrain: Why wouldn’t she want her own children to have things better than she
had it?

Yet some relapsing wound makes my teeth gnaw seeing my nephew be loved by you in such
unabashed glory in way I never even grazed.

Why doesn’t she want her own children to have things better than she had it?
ABA, ABA, ABA, ABA, ABA, ABAA

My high is leveling off and that’s perfect. Now, I can settle in for a digestible episode of TV
littered with vivid shots of pleasant skies overlooking a small town of people who have
meaningful problems with resolutions. These shows always have titles resembling the names
of ski lodges.

These stories never face the deeply cold night of the truth.
What you needed then. What you need now.
Will never come.

By Elena Talia