It May Be True

This came to me during meditation. I’m not sure if it’s a poem, a lament, or a love letter to someone gone too soon. I didn’t mean to write it—it just arrived. Sometimes grief finds a shape before we do.

It may be true, but I still love you

Did something happen in Olympia?
Did you meet your Aphrodite, swathed in white—
Red plastic fingernails encircling a cocktail,
Red lips, subtly smiling,
Dark eyes beneath heavy lashes.

It may be true, but I still love you

Cigarettes and a jug of wine—
Clear-blown glass sloshing with liquid poison,
Nulling regret, amplifying pleasure,
Lucifer’s snake coiling through your intestines.

It may be true, but I still love you

You lived hard and full.
You were brave because you admitted you were scared—
Scared of the snake now eating your organs.
Poison in your belly,
Temptation too fair.

It may be true, but I still love you

You laughed as you lived, never holding back.
You loved your mother, and you died like your mother:
Skeletal, never hungry.
The life that burned so brightly
Finally simmering away.

It may be true, but I will always love you.

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Has grief ever come to you like this—through image, memory, or myth? I’d love to know what speaks to you here.