Eerie Fairytale - Olly Fox

I can't get the image out of my head Of when I held you right there And watched you die Upstairs in the back bedroom of our house Where we have lived for many years Your last gasping breaths I see it again and again As the breeze blew in The room I still don't go in at night Because I see you Your transformed, dying face will recede with time Is what our counselor said Who we walked to every Monday holding hands Slower every week with your breathing Until we had to drive But then only two months after you died Our counselor died All at once, her empty office with no light on As if her work was done We are all always so close to not existing at all Except in the confusion of our survived-bys grasping at the echoes Today our daughter asked me if mama swims I told her, "Yes, she does And that's probably all she does Now." What was you is now borne across waves Evaporating

In October 2015, I was out in the yard I just finished splitting up the scrap two-by-fours into kindling Glanced up at the half moon pink chill refinery cloud light Two big blackbirds flew over, their wings whooshing and low Two ravens, but only two Their black feathers tinted in the sunset I knew these birds were omens but of what I wasn't sure They were flying out toward the island where we hoped to move You were probably inside You were probably aching, wanting not to die Your body transformed I couldn't bear to look so I turned my head west Like an early death Now I can only see you on the fridge in lifeless pictures And in every dream I have at night And in every room I walk into Like here, where I sit the next October Still seeing your eyes Pleading and afraid, full of love Calling out from another place because you're not here I watched you die in this room then I gave your clothes away I'm sorry, I had to Now I'll move I will move with our daughter We will ride over water With your ghost underneath the boat What was you is now but bones And I cannot be at home I'm running, reef flailing The second time I went to Haida Gwaii it was just me and our daughter Only one month after you died my face was still contorted Driving up and down, boots wet inside, aimless and weeping I needed to return to the place where we discovered that Childless, we could blanket ourselves in the moss there For our long lives But when we came home you were pregnant And then our life together was not long You had cancer and you were killed And I'm left living like this Crying on the logging roads with your ashes in a jar Thinking about the things I'll tell you When you get back from wherever it is that you've gone But then I remember death is real And I'm still here in Masset It's August 12th, 2016 You've been dead for one month and three days And we are sleeping in the forest There is sand still in the blankets from the beach Where we released you from the jar When we wake up, all the clothes that we left out are cold and damp just from the air permeating The grounds opens up Surrounded by growth Nurse logs with layers of moss and life Beyond the cedars, the sound of water Thick salal And God like huckleberries The ground absorbs and remakes whatever falls Nothing dies here But here is where I came to grieve To dive into it with you With your absence But I keep picking you berries