Everything That Won't Happen, a poem

I'm not just grieving you...

I'm furious about you.

Furious at a road. A car. A moment I wasn't in.

Furious that the world kept spinning like nothing happened.

Furious that I have to say "was" now instead of "is."

I'm grieving grandfather.

A word I'll never get to earn.

I will never look into my grandchild's eyes.

Never see your face show up in someone new.

Never watch you see your own kid for the first time and finally get why I always looked at you like that.

That's more than just sadness. That's theft.

Somebody owed me that. Owed you that.

And I don't get to be angry at anyone specific...

so I'm angry at everything.

I'm angry at birthdays that still come.

Angry at other men bouncing grandkids on their knee like it's nothing.

Angry that I know exactly what I'm missing

because I can see it so clear it hurts to breathe.

I'm grieving thirty. Forty. Gray in your hair.

I'm grieving a whole man I only got the first draft of.

And under all the rage

is just this...

I miss you so much I can't stand it.

I don't get the rest of the story.

I just get to sit here

in the parts that were supposed to come next.