The Funeral

There's this feeling in my chest, like my heart has stopped pumping the blood through my veins.
Like every breath I take is suffocating me.
It buries itself in my bones and my muscles.
In my lungs and my guts.
And it never leaves.
And when I least expect it, it surfaces again, strangling me.
The gangrene is all I've ever known, because I grieve a life I never had.
I grieve community. A place to belong.
I grieve the joy that should've lasted.
I grieve who I could have been if I didn’t let the world get to me.
I grieve everything I didn’t get to have because my heart wasn't beating.
And now I stew in that grief, wishing for something to breathe oxygen into my lungs.
Something to bring me into the life I should be living.