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THE FEELING THAT COMES WITH A LOSS by Tammy Takahashi


That Feeling That Comes With a Loss...

The feeling that comes with a loss,
that this hole, this gaping absence
swallows, too, all that still remains,
so that the fragile balance whispers
its soulful last, before trailing away ...
and what then, is the work of recovery,
when you feel now, between worlds,
pieces of you bound to the departed,
where in the moment you'd rather be,
with its borders dissolved in the dark,
like you have entered your own dreams,
which no longer end, which relieves you.
But then, you sigh, or gasp, or choke,
and you are brought back to your body,
battered and fragile, broken in places,
but here, where you've always breathed,
where love first came to dance with you.
Here, from where the glory feelings arise,
here, from where all that you love leaves.
Bound to yourself, to your shaky breath
where all the promises can be fulfilled,
where, one staggered breath at at a time,
you can fill your body with everything
that exists around you, you can choose
what and how to be here, while you are.
To hold the departed in dear embrace
rather than to take a too-early flight.
To feel it all, here, now, in this, our life.



Artwork by Tammy Takahashi

Tammy Stone Takahashi is a writer, poet, photographer and student of life. Her short stories and poems have been widely published and anthologized and she has worked on several anthologies as co-editor. Her published works include a book of photography, "Tag it! Toronto: A City's Imagination Revolution" (2009), and the poetry collections Formation: Along the Ganges and Back Again (2015), Little Poems for Big Seasons (2016) and Land, 2018. She is based in Canada and Japan, and can be found curled up with a good good, talking to trees or hand-sewing in her spare time. She invites you to see some of her recent photography here and to connect with her on her writer's pagetwitter and her blog, There’s No War in World, here.

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