The Half-Life of Grief

By Julie Murphy

And now my mother is the person I call 
when I can’t get out of bed and it’s already 
after ten, where I am now, at the end
of the second year, when I’m not crying 
every second but wish I could. And when 
she says I know, her tone is so kind, 
as if all of the kindness in the world is concentrated 
in the quiet timbre of her ninety-three years. 
As if it’s turned to roses, pink—like her cheeks 
and her cashmere sweater—its fullness 
the honeyed petals of the Peace Rose,
the spicy center of the flower, and then 
there’s a bit of rough edge somewhere down 
near her voice box that tears at her words 
like thorns would. And because the whole flower 
of kindness is in her voice, not some sweet platitude, 
I can get out of bed—late as it is—careful to mute 
the phone so she doesn’t hear the covers 
turning over or my steps on the stairs, 
the coffee canister opening. Muting and unmuting 
as we remember our dead husbands, the nights
rolling dark and numberless before us.

Julie Murphy’s poems appear or are forthcoming in How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, Atlanta Review, Written Here: Community of Writers Poetry Review 2019, Massachusetts Review, The Buddhist Review, CALYX, Common Ground Review, The Louisville Review, Red Wheelbarrow, and The Alembic, among other journals. A licensed psychotherapist, Julie developed Embodied Writing™, a somatic approach. She teaches poetry, as a volunteer, at Salinas Valley State Prison. Julie lives in Santa Cruz, California.

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