INVENTORY OF REMAINS
- Dark Poets Club
- Jan 30
- 1 min read
By Tim Reaper
One: a toothbrush
with your bite in it,
bristles bent
like prayers
that gave up.
Two: the last shirt you wore,
still holding
your shape—
a soft absence
folded into cotton.
Three: a glass
with lipstick ghosting the rim,
a tender bruise
of colour.
Four: your name
in my mouth,
heavy as a coin
I can’t spend.
Five: the silence
after the door,
after the phone,
after the last sentence
didn’t save anything.
I line these items up
like evidence.
I tell myself
this is what healing looks like—
a neat arrangement
of ruins.
But grief is not tidy.
Grief is a hand
reaching into the drawer
and closing
on nothing,
again,
and again.