Let us speak briefly
of those moments
when a body known to us
vacates
its physicality.

(Forgive me.  I must speak
clinically of this
to shield my own fear
for I find myself 
susceptible to greater pain

when we grieve in numbers;
although it is scarcely less
a concern when I am alone,
it is enough diminished
to be preferable.)

So let us speak
briefly and clinically of this
even as I am retching 
within, even as I attempt
to master myself.

It’s known that more
than one memory of the missing body 
remains with us and will likely  
haunt us whenever we are
where it once was.

We must endeavor
not to be fooled by this —
not to imagine we see the body
on those stairs, for example,
tucking back a lock of hair.

We must acknowledge 
that gone is gone, that 
what we hold of a gone body
is not the body itself
but our own fright at its departure.

(Forgive me, again, for speaking
so coldly of all of this. I am
not in full control of how 
my body longs to wail
right now, how my body

is absenting itself
from my measured speech and thought,
how it begins to sag
with grief and fear, how my body
admits that it longs also to be gone.)

There will be times
when we are fooled into believing
the hole in space where the body was
is filled with something 
beyond the body…

forgive me for saying
I believe this as well.
Forgive me for believing
I can speak of any of this
and hold my body together

while inside
I quake at the idea
of never seeing someone again
in any way,
shape or form.  Forgive me

for understanding such departure
so well, for still now and then
longing for such departure as well.
Forgive me, I think
I hear her whispering.