Entstellung | a poem about grief

you made yourself disappear

and in death you became another person

a younger brother that I couldn’t predict

the gesture you chose seemed effortless

death played by ear

I wanted revenge

the memories just stop

and I can’t keep up as they start to fade

I don’t know where to hold them

if not in the sun

and then your pain comes back to me

a pain that I know well

the images flood in

and I think you resigned very early on

and you turned tragedy into comedy

to keep yourself alive

to keep yourself broken just enough so that you’d hold

I am scared of a smile whose origins I misinterpret

there is a smile that has made its peace with the world

a smile that lingered on your face

the depth terrified me

you wouldn’t let me reach that far

that smile can only live in a state misinterpreted

because otherwise you’d know that it is not really a smile

but an end that takes place on your face

and finds its way

and turns death into a distorted portrait of ever-unanswered questions