Spring (Pablo Picasso)

I used to think that grief was heavy. But it is
actually like an edge. It weighs nothing.

It consumes itself to remain a line. On some
days, when I am too heavy with joy, I divide

myself into cubes and triangles so that I can
once again be faceted like grass. What to

do with my dead mother’s proverbs, my
dead father’s unlived years. Because I killed

him, I have the extra years in his briefcase.
The black case had a plastic red label with

his English name embossed on it. Briefcases
were once hardcased, lasting longer than

the people who carried them in sunlight,
kneeling in front of a goat, his hair turning

into the tree trunk. My father’s briefcase is
so heavy, it feels like a eucalyptus trunk.

I move it from house to house. Each time
it takes one more person to move it. I don’t

know where the extra years are coming from.
There’s no one left to ask. Now I know that

when we die, each of us has a surplus. That
the body leaves, but the years stay.