Right now, I know,
having been where you are,
grief is your largest organ.
Every centimeter
from your scalp to your toes
feels scalded, disfigured for life.

But I hope you’ll be surprised,
as I was, sometime next year
(or the one after that), to see
grief claim a smaller space,
to mimic instead a missing lung—
an inability to inflate your chest
quite as fully as before
or exercise quite as energetically.

Something you don’t notice every minute
of every day. Just in quiet moments
like the shower, when you’re soaping
your torso and touch the rough surface
of an incision that no longer bleeds
but will never quite heal.