“The Beyond” © Tybee Maitri

 

The Companion

She was a beautiful slice of my darkness,
a lonely shadow traveling alongside me.
And her lack of color
was a heavy piece of luggage,
a weighted blanket around me
both comforting and suffocating,
equally soft and scraping against my skin.
She was a conundrum,
I realized,
after listening to her voice climb and fall.
She caused earthquakes and raised mountains.
She silenced mockingbirds with her stoicism.
Her waves were rough on the surface
and motionless down in her deep.
I was so mesmerized by her
that I lost track of our time together,
day and night had blended into one.
I finally asked for her name
when our conversation was exhausted and
our eyes no longer level,
and she told me to call her:
Grief.

 

Tinamarie Cox lives in Arizona with her husband and two children. She has an existential crisis daily, and writes and paints to escape her mind. Many of her pieces relate to mental health topics, including her debut chapbook, Self-Destruction in Small Doses (Bottlecap Press).

Tybee Maitri is a mixed media artist. They studied Studio Art at Simmons University in Boston, MA. They live, create, and are healing in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina with their cat Muchini.