I’m walking through the grocery store, shoulders slumped and half-moons under my eyes. 

My fingernails have crust under them. 

My nail polish is chipped. 

I make a note to myself to repaint my nails. 

I pass through aisles like a character in a video game, and I don’t recognize my reflection in the wide windows that I pass.

Come back to the body. 

Come back, love. 

I miss Someone, 

Or maybe I just miss something that they used to do. 

Fingers burning against my hips, 

Lips lingering lazily on my jaw, 

Limp and half-open, 

Biting at the raw skin of my neck. 

I passed a man today with a large nose and light brown skin, and he reminded me of Someone. 

Come back to the body. 

Come back, love. 

I think I’ve realized why I liked Someone so much. 

He filled so many of the empty spaces in my life that were just waiting. 

Today, my therapist told me that grief is like a ravished city in Germany, bombed during World War II. 

I don’t remember which one. 

They built a town around the remains but left the half-burned church steeple to remind them of the loss. 

The grief is simply too immense for one building to contain, but it holds itself half-up, trying. 

Grief is like that. Too big to contain, but we try. God, we try. 

Come back to the body. 

Come back, love. 

I’ve been thinking about my grandpa. 

The one who passed away so long ago and yet so recently.

It makes my chest fold in on itself. 

There is not enough room in one body for this feeling that we call grief. 

But I try. God, I try. What choice do I have? 

There is nowhere else to carry your body anymore. 

Lingering in the wind as it is.

So, I must carry it in mine. 

Come back to the body.

Come back, love.