I Found Grief in My Kitchen

by Vaishnavi Radhakrishnan

Grief is a lunchbox that returns home,

full.

You don’t really know why you haven’t eaten

you packed your favorite aloo parathas with extra ghee

but you didn’t bother opening the box.

Isn’t that what grief is;

all that gorgeous love,

left idle within sealed boxes that get kept aside?

And maybe you could have finished the parathas if you shared your lunch with friends

but your friends don’t like parathas

and you know the act of sharing grief never rid you of it in entirety,

so what’s the point anyways?

Sometimes you wonder if it’s better to purposely forget your lunchbox

just so that you won’t have to come home and deal with an untouched box.

When grief gets too overwhelming it messes with love that’s coming your way;

it’s probably best you pretend forget it somewhere and return to it secretly

only on nights when you’re staring at the ceiling unable to fall asleep

(well, you can’t fall asleep because you can’t actually forget grief, can you?)

But one day you’ve got to bring home your lunchbox

you realize it’s been in the lost and found area for too long and

now people are noticing

You open the box and let out a sigh before you can clean it up.

Isn’t grief the sigh you didn’t finish sighing?