Grief sneaks up on you
not the big rolls of shock,
the tidal waves of how will I live
but rather those small, odd bit
flotsam and jetsam of a life you lived
before
            John Wick moves through crowds, parting them
            with a knife, a gun, a well placed fist,
            you imagine that he must once have moved
            fast tenderly too
            The puzzle of a fight scene is trying to remember
            that every fighter once loved someone or
            loves someone
still
there are times when a thing as simple
as tea with too much honey, a joke told
in a certain way, can make you stumble
out of the now, how easy it is to forget
you are forgetting until you
don’t
            forgive, is the motto of the movies, don’t try
            to move past what breaks us, fight it
            John Wick doesn’t blink, grief made machine,
            rising from the ground, hands opening in the dark
            like praying in rewind

Chloe N. Clark is the author of Your Strange Fortune, The Science of Unvanishing Objects, Under My Tongue, and the forthcoming Collective Gravities. She is co-EIC of Cotton Xenomorph and can be found on Twitter @PintsNCupcakes