The Shape of Grief
a development of my earlier poem “Station”
In the cold darkness of a jostling Greyhound,
boredom’s minutiae envelop the woman’s hearing:
candy wrappers and potato chip bags burst open;
teenagers scroll through movie clips on TikTok;
local radio hums gently from the speakers overhead.
On her lap, a copy of Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons
rests unopened. A last minute buy from the station.
The back promises a thrilling conspiracy
perpetrated by the Illuminati against the Catholic Church
that only hero Professor Robert Langdon can solve.
‘There must be something more to life,’ the woman thinks.
‘Maybe not secret societies, but a grand plan. A reason
for all this to be.’ She wears a floral dress and pink cardigan
in anticipation of meeting her lover at the rest stop.
The sound walls along the I-95 corridor blur into a gray smear.
Behind the woman in pink, a young girl starts to wail—
her iPad has run out of battery in the middle of Sesame Street.
The girl’s mother croons a measured lullaby,
one she has fine-tuned over years of sleepless nights.
The girl demands snacks; her mother forages through a duffel.
The woman in pink inhales deeply.
She begins to feel herself levitating above her seat.
Above the mother and child, the teenagers, the driver.
She floats until her astral body meets the roof of the vehicle
careening down the black-and-green-patched interstate
with origin and terminus interlocked on the same mobius strip.
She barely hears the mother telling her, “Look,
your book fell on the floor.” The woman in pink
manages a sheepish “Thank you” and picks it up.
The novel has flipped to a random page: Langdon explaining
that the Illuminati want revenge for being purged centuries ago.
When the bus pulls into the rest stop, the woman stumbles out,
reeling towards the cafeteria, as if nursing a flat tire.
Her eyes scan the rows of vending machines
and fast food restaurants and dining tables
where families are laughing and scrolling on their phones.
Standing at the heart of the noise is the woman’s boyfriend.
His eyes meet hers, and they stare for a moment.
A tide of helplessness washes her body over to his,
where she crashes into his arms
and explodes into a thousand whirls of Brownian motion.