Looking for Stars

a poem for my dearest friend who is living through unimaginable loss

Looking for Stars

This is not about solace.
Not about a god who explains
the universe but does not enter it—
hovering like a chalkboard diagram
while bodies suffer,
while skin and hearts split open,
while grief settles in the chest
like river silt,
layer after heavy layer.

I am not interested in anything
that floats above grief
like a weather system
that never makes landfall.

I am interested in weight—
how it takes up residence in the body,
a tenant who never leaves,
the marks it makes.
A cupboard worn bare by hands.
A mug left half-washed,
as if time simply stopped there.
A drawer that won’t close.
A stone heavy in the pocket,
with nowhere else to go.

If help comes at all,
if it comes from anything
we might dare call divine,
it is not distant.
It is immanent—
a low fire buried under ash,
a stone warmed by the hand
until it feels almost alive.

I pick up a stick of charcoal—
that afterlife of a tree
resting in my palm—
and press it to paper.
I smudge, circle upon circle,
like pacing a small room,
touch answering touch
the way skin remembers skin

No promises.
No transcendence.
No explanations.

Only this:
hands blackened
like they’ve been down in the earth,
breath still moving
like water under ice,
the hurt allowed
to lie where it falls.

This is where love lives now.
Not above us,
not in spite of us—
but here,
like a pulse found at the wrist,
where the pain is greatest.