blotter

about to tear july off my desk (as always, the requisite 2 week delay applies, my usual inability to let go) and i had a sudden memory of cleaning out my mother's office at her work the week after she died. her notes to herself of things to do three weeks hence. three weeks that never arrived. or did, without her. what happens to the consciousness in those always arrested plans? me and d. due to arrive for a visit a week and a half after her death. d. set to come in the night before me, my mother with a note to pick her up, with flight info. a note to pick me up the following morning. shorthand blotter scribbles noting vacation time for the visit that ended instead as bereavement leave.

it doesn't go away, this missing. this grief is not a wound, or a scar. it's something more like mercury - poisonous, beautiful, never solid, never stable...