We don't measure death by the distance between tombstones or the amount of time that passes after the last breath.

Death settles into us deeply.

It is the dust bunnies of our elbows,

swept up only to be uprooted with a sneeze.

After my last grandparent died I read that people feel grief in all sorts of ways and grief is normal,

it's only when numbness settles in that we should be worried. 

Humans aren't supposed to feel nothing.

We are supposed to find grief lodged in between our front teeth,

pick it out from underneath the soles of our shoes,

shake it out all over the floor and out in front of us.

No,

death isn't supposed to be recorded on a ruler,

please stop counting centimenters in hope of forgetting.

I'm still finding it everywhere even when I stopped looking.

It's the stain on a new white shirt,

the ghost in the black and white picture,

the mystery.

It's the person who wasn't invited but shows up anyway,

the missing equation that I always forget but always have to remember,

and how do people do it, then?

Forget?