ossification in poetry

grief replaces memory
slower than the tides
still getting the job
done nonetheless inch
by inch one atom at a
time like fossilizing
bone to eternal stone

those fossils are not
t-rex marrow after all
that’s not how any of
it works, fossils sub
in for the real thing
bit by bit until that
stuff once living is
substituted with some
foreverlasting mockery
of what’s forever gone

every day the good things
swapped with pain in place
of the good thing’s name
searing into your heart
a trauma that just looks
the same as what you lost
of what you loved so much

until long enough unreckoned
what meant so much to you is
gone, just an echo in its stead
let behind immortal in the deep
tar-pits of your worried head

a pain immemorial
a love long dead
if you let grief
hang unabated
papered over
lied and elide
too long denied
soul to aching hole
and bones to stones
festering alone