half-centennial

i thought i had grief down to an art: 
throw the ashes to the wind, 
catch them in your mouth,
and move on

but i can't work through this
as if it were a checklist
loss is not linear,
a recipe reading:
simmer in sorrow, sadness, anger
until it is reduced by half,
a glaze of grief 
at the bottom of the pan

my doctor can keep
his Kubler-Ross model,
give her five stages
another five years
because i am not finished
tearing at my shirt,
painting mascara Roschorch
on my pillowcase,
letting my blood
of the oxygen we both breathed

i hear the respirators
when the rest of the house is asleep
your funeral flowers still
hang in the rafters of the attic,
raining down on me in the summer heat
i stare at pictures of you 
as old as i am now, to try and
remember your living face  
the cadence of the songs you sung
the line of freckles beach sun left 
on the underside of your tired eyes

this life is punctuated
by two days alone:
the day your heart began beating
and the day it stopped
and acceptance reads
like the closing of a chapter,
the cessation of a cycle, 
that time says ended 
six years ago