Jubilee

Celebration

Return

Commemoration 

Event

Ceremony

How do I say today was the day grief sank its teeth into my soul?

How do I share that today is marked by the first loss that felled a chain of domino losses one after the other?

What word encapsulates the heartache that comes when the calendar lands on this date each year? 

This isn’t a celebration, but a return,

to the memory of the beginning of uncertainty. 

Today, the day I was a child abandoned. A child left to the snickers and shushes that dreadful day incited. A child shoved into the husk of a brokenly wise for her age adult.

Today is the day I feel inching closer, closer each day as my memory grows slower. My focus fades. My body reminding me today is on the horizon. 

A day like every other, but forever unforgettable. 

A day I have wished away more times than I have ever stopped to think of breathing. 

A day that never ends, each year until I die. 

I would walk away from today, if only I had the energy. I would hide myself away, but it’s a Thursday and work must be finished. I would black out all these days on every calendar, if it hadn’t already been blacked out by this dreadful recurring reality. 

A year on rotation that spins me right back into disbelief.

A year revisited that seems unshakeably sturdy.

A year without all the memories that should be jubilant.

Because when you left, the part of me untouched by trauma left with you. 

Today I say, an unhappy anniversary to us both.