The Tapestry

by Sami McKay

I want someone to pull my grief

out from inside me

like a wet sheet

brought out to hang on the line.

I would like to see the tapestry.

All the details of my disease

on display for us to examine.

Dear, please take me to the gallery

to observe the pain on canvas

stapled firmly onto frame.

They’ll call it us.

Just promise me it will be beautiful

and that someday I’ll understand why it felt so heavy in my gut

and why only I could carry it this way.

I beg you to help me with the thread.

To mend my patchwork memory

and make sense of the fabric.

The design of all that’s aching.

Could you lie to me?

Could you tell me that the weight inside will make me strong?

That I will survive this and leave unscathed?

I know that this loss will change me

the same way the love carved a shape

that fit only one way

with you.

I wish you could take my grief

and pull from my throat the atrophied vein that bound us

before it decayed deep inside.

I would let it hang

along with the linen seeped in all that was

the memories that stained a sheet soaked with loss.

After all, it is our creation.

And that ugly putrid pendant would suspend from the wall

like the finest piece of art you’ve ever seen.

An emblem of the rotten way we mourn.

And you would laugh at our revulsion.

And you would tell me it was honest.

And that you loved me

and this was the cost.