White caps break on my sternum and black salt whirls under the surface of my chest.

I am a walking vessel of grief, lumbering around with a bucket on each shoulder, sometimes sloshing onto the sidewalk or a worker in the grocery store when my center of gravity pulls too far right or left.

Arising to answer a knock on the door is all it takes to stumble and spill: I am crying into a stranger’s soft red sweater, strings of her wiry hair sticking to my twisted lips.

At night my mind escapes my body, hovering above, listening curiously as noises escape my throat never heard before — whiny squeaks, a tiny wounded deer, curled in the ditch of my ribcage, trying with all her might not to be heard in mourning.