FUNERAL ━━ c. diggory

vi. fifteen days

⠀⠀Grief has five stages, but these stages have no rules it seems, cycling in and out of my neurosis like grief is the entity in charge. It is in fact a part of my brain as much as the hippocampus or the cerebral cortex, grief, nestling itself like ivy in the fleshy membranes, another layer of flesh under my skull.

⠀⠀I. DENIAL
⠀⠀For months when my eyes would flutter open I would think you were alive for just a fleeting moment. It lasted just a few seconds, and suddenly your death wrapped itself around my brain, puncturing the bubble-wrap I'd painstakingly enveloped myself in. I hold your hand in my dreams and let you kiss me only to wake up and feel nothing but air slipping between my fingers. Denial feels as hollow as your cheekbones, as my soul slips from the back of my throat and follows you into the after-life. I'm straddling the real and the false illusion I've created in my mind. I hope you're well. I miss you.

⠀⠀II. ANGER
⠀⠀I am more monster than girl. Your death took my girlhood and revealed the slumbering monster inside. The sweet antidote you provided to nullify the pain has become poison, and it's made me so angry, full of spite like the witch Circe, turning men to pigs and slaughtering them. The sanguine covers my fingers like pomegranate juice, and the seas commanded by Poseidon couldn't wash your blood from my hands. I'm an angry girl, more spite than human, angry at myself, angry at the world, but never angry at you. I could never be angry with you for dying my sweet martyr.

⠀⠀III. BARGAINING
⠀⠀Sometimes I wonder what I could've done differently to prevent all of this. I beg God to send me back in time but he never listens. Why should he? I am an abomination, a pulchritudinous sinner who never honored him. He will stand by and let me crucify myself for the damage I caused. If only I'd not let you enter the tournament, because you had been doing it for us until I was the reason there was no us anymore. Losing you was melancholy like I'd never known and that dagger to the chest still aches today, a stab wound that never healed, a punch in the gut, a syringe of grief puncturing my aorta. I would trade my soul in exchange for you to return to earth.

⠀⠀IV. DEPRESSION
⠀⠀You've put an ache in me. It's burrowed itself deep and sits there like something heavy weighing me down. I can't get out of bed when it's at its worst. When that ache subsides to a dull pain, I can manage to get something small done. Taking a walk to the corner store and buying a jug of milk feels like a victory these days. The oxycodone helps a little. A pain medication to soothe aching organs soothes my aching brain. I'm standing alone, a hurricane in the form of a girl, a melancholic maelstrom of destruction and grief. If I toe the line separating my windowsill from the street below, I can barely keep myself from jumping to join you.

⠀⠀V. ACCEPTANCE
⠀⠀Is this even a stage? I know that you died. I'm not a fool. But you died too young, and before me, breaking your promise. I cannot reincarnate the dead. But I accept that I can join you. The only thing keeping me is my own cowardice.