The Cenotaph

There are places in me
where I go to mourn
what is not there.

An empty stone,
a name without a body,
a date without a doorway.

The precious thing is buried elsewhere—
in a house that no longer stands,
in a field grown over strange weeds,
in a voice I cannot quite recover,
in the face of someone
before disappointment taught them
how to look away.

I bring flowers
to the wrong place.

Still, I come.

Because memory does not always know
where the dead are buried.
Sometimes, it only knows
where to kneel.

And perhaps that is what I am:
a cenotaph of my former selves,
a monument raised far from the grave,
a body still walking
with epitaphs hidden under the skin.

Here lies the boy who believed.
Here lies the song unsung.

Here lies the photo with the blurred face.
Here lies the joy that went ahead of me
and never came back.

But the mausoleum is empty.

That is the terror.
That is the mercy.

For what is not here
may not be wholly lost.
What is buried far away
may still be sending roots beneath the earth,
their ghostly fingers stretching toward me.

The Cenotaph Triad

The Cenotaph

The Roots Beneath the Stone

The First Green Thorn

“Goodbye For Now” was born from the silence left behind when someone dear is no longer with us.

Last night’s long set at Malmö Brewing Co., was a moving space—thank you for inviting me into that circle of talented songwriters. I’ve carried that emotion home in my heart.

Stream “Goodbye For Now” now wherever you listen to music, and let it speak to the place where grief and love meet

#GoodbyeForNow #EmotionalSongs #LiveMusic #GriefAndHope #SingerSongwriter #SoulFamily #RawAndReal #TrueToMyself

Thread: What the characters think #HeraldPetrel is about.

Captain Harold Galahad, what is this book about?

“It is about how I fail as a captain. I don’t want to be a captain. Better: I can’t be a captain anymore. This skill died with Aretha. I don’t want any of this. All I want is to be in Charkovaya again and hide behind my desk.”

Minifigs by minifigs.me

https://books2read.com/HeraldPetrel?format=all

@bookstodon #SciFi #SpaceOpera #SpaceOdyssey #ReadingCommunity #grief #griefandhope #PTSD #CharacterDrivenSciFi

“It’s like looking at ghosts”: inside the Australian Museum’s extinction cabinets. When people encounter the cabinets cataloguing the mammals wiped out since colonisation, they often cry. But what is the most useful way to grieve the destruction of a species? #Extinction #AustralianMuseum #Conservation #GriefAndHope

https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/jul/13/australian-museum-extinction-cabinets-endangered-species