The day begins like a smile, pulling me out of bed sweetly with gentle pink and orange caresses. Winter’s whisper envelopes the frosty grass outside my window. The trees are frozen in angles of anguish, obfuscation; stray branches scratching the windowpane faintly.
I want to have no synonym. No confusion with the other lost children, who cry quietly because they haven’t been young since grief froze fingers and toes, took hearts and squeezed them of decadent innocence, dripping away like rose-colored honey. There are too many days now to remember the dead, bright blue winter afternoons passed in memoriam. The skin of my knuckles cracking like ice tight across the pond.
In loving memory of my mother, of my grandmother, of my grandfather. The people I miss on the best days and the worst; who, if they walked through my front door today, I would cry with relief, no surprise, no fear. Honeycomb hearts buzzing again. Snow melting like sticky icing sinking into hot cinnamon rolls.
In loving memory of the moments I have wasted denying I care about them, about their loss. Sitting at windows watching pine trees murmur to each other, thinking I’d never be in on the green secret. In loving memory of holding hands with people I love. In loving memory of the erroneous notion of normalcy that holds us back from the glorious uncommon. In loving memory of my past selves who I like to think I shed like snakeskin in favor of ever-brighter colors.
In loving memory. I might forget, I will misremember, I have fabricated, but I do love.
Put in a good word for us Judy.