Deep
I leave the doctor’s office,
blood in my underwear.
Quietly, you are over.
In the elevator,
I think about that time
I didn’t learn to swim:
emerging from the lake chin-first.
Craving scale and scope more
than I craved air. I wanted
Rand McNally to the left
of my periphery: one inch
equals one mile. Beach defined
by the key of fingernails—lengths
bridging it to my coordinates.
But I bobbed in grid-less nothing,
water and sky careening
like two rolls of aluminum foil
spooling out, and then
into, each other. Straight tamped-
down ending. No border at all.
In the hospital parking lot,
I linger near the ambulances
lurching toward announced tragedies.
Their siren lights first appear
larger than a breadbox. One block
later, they’re apple-sized,
at the tree line they fold to the breadth
of a loon’s single pupil
before receding completely.
I know again what I knew
before: grief is not deep.
Grief is all surface.