Tending Grief

Sometimes it is small 
as a moth folded in the hollow

of my chest. Sometimes it circles
my wrists and ladders up my spine,

then takes hold of my shoulders 
to twist them into ache. Sometimes 

it has the heft of stone and I 
no longer remember when exactly  

it grew more weighted, or when 
I thought the body could make a little 

more room for what it can't actually hold. 
Though I want to forget, it shapeshifts. 

My only hope is that in staying and not 
simply passing through, it becomes 

the kind of root which remembers 
it can grow into something green.