How to establish boundaries with the dead.

July 24, 2017 candacemorris 0 Comments

Hello 39, welcome
to Hell. I go
in a new kimono.

One mourning dove reminds us
"This is it. We are in the nightmare," she says.

If that is so, then here in the dark side of our dreams,
the gin glows.
Big chunks of labradorite gifted by the dead now become the gin's rocks.
Take the stones, drop them
in your drink.
In nightmareland, you eat the earth
she bounded on, anything to be close to her bones again.

Like the aboveworld, you carve time
out for yourself, but still in Hell you are.
You try to take a break
from grief, for self-care,
to visit the land of the before times.
Tell it, "okay stay outside while I get a massage."

Have you ever had to practice boundaries with the dead?

Grief is a clueless, needy extrovert,
a friend with no sense of solitude.
Gregarious as fuck.
No, you cannot come over unannounced
I'd prefer if you texted before occupying every synapse, bronchioli, and eyelash.
Still, Hell

I'm taking up residence here.
The rent is goddamned
expensive, but the views
oh the panoraming, expansical, multiversalicious view.





Dear Dove,
What are you now?

Are you the steam coming up from the mug you gave me?
Are you the smell of chamomile and lavender?
Are you the lightdance dabbling across my journal's white pages?
Are you the Mexican blanket shrouding my head?
Are you that cobweb, my cat, this air, this palm plant, that flicker?
Are you god?



I know you are new to it,
still learning how to be in this afterplace.
But when you figure out how to, will you please send the answers?
And also, your new address?

I'll be watching.


~your wise old owl