“How Are You Doing?” - Sashana Kane Proctor

[Lawrence Robinson]

“How Are You Doing?”

The pain of grief is something
     wider and wilder than what we have been told
     an unknowable expanse of a night
          no moon, no stars
          and screaming winds so fierce
          they fling the howling ragdoll me 
          through walls of death
          onto the wider plain  
     where I wail for the return of my son
     and wander far beyond 
           the ordinary caring about most things.

And still he never comes
      so I drag myself over ancient trails of the bereaved.

This is where I live now
      a part of me shuffling bleak terrain of grief
      where loss and loneliness are a wound
      never to heal
      never to close over 
      though I tend it with my last love.

And this is how I am doing.

                                                                                                               
	- Sashana Kane Proctor