solitude does not always carry the weight of loneliness  

yet today, as the clouds bear their familiar darkness 

there are reminders that I was a chronic monolith 

that the love I once had  

is now embalmed and ready for burial; 

this love transfigures into a body –  

it waits for me to place the final rose over the casket,  

to close it myself and watch the dirt  

pile high and heavy over this  

dead, aching body, who begins to decompose  

with the (cardinals) and pink ribbons my mom detested  

for the first time without the need for silence –   

today I have divorced daydreams;  

I have cremated the casket and witness  

a faint blue halo hover over  

the charred fingertip of this wooded frame;  

I tell a story about my mother  

who always hated campfires –  

I tell her that grief has wings,  

how I have always wanted to fly.  

Hailing from the Pacific Northwest, Annalise Ruth enjoys writing poetry that combines personal narrative and the liminal gothic.