What’s bursting out of me today is that I’m really tired.
(Does tired “burst”?
Maybe oozing or seeping might be better –
like a balloon’s slow deflate, sink-floating, never to return back to the heights it once knew.)

They’ve cut five tumors out of me already. By this time tomorrow, it will be seven.
More hope, energy, dollar bills seeping from each slice;
I ooze, I bleed, I deflate.

BUT. I stay afloat.
I have not touched the ground yet, my string still dancing in the wind, pivoting around the mountains and through the forest tress that always wave hello…. I ride the wind, the gust, the storms that blow through and once in a while raise me back to the heights of my youth again.

Now I know, grief is green.

Green like the Hulk,
it sometimes rages and smashes.

Other times, it is almost delicate,
a baby reed bending and blowing with its sisters.

It is green with envy when they have what you never will,
or green like the benjamins spent on kayak or amazon to
fill the holes you can’t stop feeling.

Grief is green bananas with no sweet
and green gators with sharp teeth.

Grief isn’t always angry.
It is sometimes gentle, like a mother
and soft, like moss.

And every once in a while, like a green deflating balloon,
it floats.