Woven by the Grief Loom

I’m not sure what shape I make in the world any more.
I say this to the North Sea, my home sea, the sea that knows of my birth, as I offer it dark tobacco and sweet wine and sour song.
I am a resemblance of where I have been, but I do not know what I am becoming.
The sea in response sighs and offers up another hagstone.
All the better to see with?
On my return to the beloved cottage, in a place few know the existence of, I squat at the threshold again, mesmerised by why the ants have been leaving me moth wings on the doorstep every day for over a month now. Even though I destroy their homes every time I weed the path.
Do ants understand mourning better than humans ever can?
I confuse the new moon with the full and the full with the new.
I am struck not by the ripening wheat in the field I walk, but the border of wildflower that prefers to die in summer rather than in winter.
What if I just stay here a while?
Can I just stay here a while?
I whisper this in the early hours of hush, hesitant of the answer that might arise from the last star before dawn.
And Now?
I clutch tightly to my dad’s false teeth, the ones I stole from the hospital, the ones that have become my intimate travel companion, as we forge a new language neither of us know how to explain.
Or Now?
I teeter on the cliff edge, a cat not a dog, holding onto my skirt tails/tales, as I throw words into the air and watch them float away wondering which will return when the winds change direction once again.
Here is where I shall stay, just for a little while.
Ash from the fire as my bed.
Grave dirt under my fingernails as my sustenance.
Waiting to see what may emerge as the gods and the fates weave my tapestry into being.
Something will return, but it is unclear as yet when or what guise that might be in.
And so,
It is with love from this space before the emergence that I write for you -
whatever and however and whoever shape you yourself may be.
Elizabeth Jane Lovely, daughter of James Thomas Lovely, granddaughter of Elsie May Lovely, great granddaugher of Alfred Edwin and Betsy Esther Lovely.