Grief and Things Far Away

by Molly Smith

Where are we supposed to feel invisible shifts?
I still go to work; I still buy the same kind of milk.
My fingers feel the same, my toes, my gut.
When the world has capsized while looking right side up,
how do we measure the difference?
Like a bird’s relationship with a glass wall, I find
myself in lots and lots of types of days
but they’re different from before, melted and
sticky like sugar in the grooves of a fingerprint.
I think we feel different kinds of grief in similar
places: salt and pepper shakers, split ends, the pages of a book.
I’d like to cut the word goodbye from the dictionary
with a pair of dull scissors so it understands its dull pain.
Maybe I do feel these shifts in my fingers
in fingernail marks on my palm and
cold metal surrounding my thumb.
I hope goodbye is supposed to taste metallic.