Critter

There’s a moment floating in the air, just above this little house, a moment that hovers and teases like a memory that is not your own, grasp the tail and pull it down, mums memory is now my own.

I'm looking for a way to find what's been left behind, a grave in the back yard, little body hiding inside. The worms are squirming, nothing to do but add new tears to the earth.

There was a wedding long ago, of this little body and another so small that lays just their resting in the grass with a happy tail and no memory of loss.

There is a hole in this heart, a place where you and that memory should sit, nothing but a hole that bleeds in drips onto the sweet icing of everything.

Metallic taste sliding and slipping, there’s a knife in this darkness that cuts and slashes, bleeds you more and makes it worse, like salt in a wound then cut it again, more salt, the cycle repeats.

Angry teeth that snarl and gnash, they’re a reminder of a time that gave strength, strength that held and comforted, held that bleeding heart and stopped the flow.

Gone, gone like a red balloon into the air, it's gone now and not coming back, little bodies in the earth all covered in a blanket of sadness and memory now.

Little bodies that meant all to a little girl, her world, her life, and the hand is gone, the clot has burst, the blood flows as freely as it first did but now it’s drowning, filling the chest and pulling life away.

Memory is the knife now; it is what makes it bleed. Was it better to have known or better to want. Mother can’t help here, not anymore.

Calling a new critter, small now, it came from the first and is new to this world, her mummy is gone now but the little critter stays, like a ball of healing sitting in my lap.

But still there are moments, I watch the memories, they’re floating in the air, taunting and questioning.

Was it better to remember, or better to simply loose without the memory?