Lakeside

I've watched her come the way the seasons come,

With heavy, wordless steps…

She carries grief the way bedrock carries rain,

Not flowing free, but locked and calcified.

Not yet.

She stood upon my shore as one who stands to fall,

Her eyes past me, past the ridge, past it all,

The grief has grown a skeleton inside her chest,

A coral thing, a ruin, an uninvited guest.

I pulled away. I chilled. I cracked the muddled ground.

She stumbled, caught a branch, turned to me and frowned.

For I had spoken plainly in the only tongue I know,

The language of refusal, of the undertow.

Not yet. Not here. Not mine.

She sat then in the mud, made a soundless cry,

The kind with no echo, seeks no ear to be found.

The grief rose up and filled her like a tide to a shore,

Too too heavy, too calcified, and so long.

Then ankle-deep I took her, temperature of bone,

Found the sharpest piece of what she called her own.

I did not take the grief. The grief is hers to keep.

I took the blade of it, the edge that would not sleep,

I filed it down among the others in my deepest silt,

The catalog of carried things, of grief and guilt.

Not yet — she exhaled then, a long sighed release,

The stone remained but lost its edge, and that was her peace.

Written for Hazel prompt.