It's Still Life

Grief Is the Hook

On this pew, I sit.
Wood remembers
my child-bones,

my grandmother’s norse-tongue,
the holy hush
she split like kindling.

Walls are whitewashed.
Salt in the mortar.
Elder gods’ runes live in this God’s house.

In the door’s header, in the walls and floor.
ᛉ Algiz (life),
ᚷ Gebo (love),
ᚦ Thurisaz (lightning’s fork).

Old views.
Rippled glass.
Bubbled panes lick at time.
:Like carnival glass.

I smile
at my imperfections.

The Baltic knows my vowels.
It whispers back to me
in rain puddle-silver.
In crow-inked silence.

In sunstruck glyphs
the blind read aloud.

My grandmother’s
voice still etches the air.
Her words older
than the mortar.

Her defiance is a bindrune of
“listen” and “laugh“.

And the day came when she said,

Grief is the hook.
Love is the line.
We are both.