GRIEF AS MONOLOGUE

 

As a kid, I racked up over $80
in overdue library fines, which
I paid to finally obtain my license
at 23. Without warning, my father
died twelve years later. And now
I envision grief as the girl, waiting
for her favorite library book that I never
returned. How she was once comforted
by its thread-bare binding, its silly
colloquialisms. How, surely, she tries
to recite the contents, verbatim,
but the protagonist has walked
off the page to a purple
she can only see with closed eyes.