The Altar I Didn’t Know I was Building

Elle Zaspel

There’s a small bowl on the bookshelf,

not meant for anything in particular.

But in it: a cicada shell, a rock from a Hamptons beach,

a blurry photo propped up beside them.

Things I kept without knowing why.

Things I wasn’t ready to throw away.

Cicadas remind me of him—

loud among friends, a little bit silly,

as if joy itself made them tremble.

They seem forgetful,

unsure of when to rise from the earth,

but their confusion is only appearance.

They know exactly when.

He was like that too.

His keys are lost,

his books—vanished into someone else’s box.

Mine are stacked neatly,

deliberate, placed with care,

as if by tending to my objects,

I might still be touching his.

There are trinkets from cities he never got to visit.

Tiny brass charms, receipts, matchbooks

from corners of the world

I tried to collect for the both of us.

The Douro waits.

I haven’t gone.

Too afraid the river might hold him

more completely than I ever could.

Too afraid it won’t.

And then there’s the scent—

not his, exactly,

but close enough to trick me on a tired afternoon.

I catch it when I’m not looking,

and my knees forget how to hold me up.

The sparkle of his eyes—

God, how bright they were—

burns now only in memory,

a flicker I fan when I’m alone.

This shelf,

this corner,

this drawer of objects I couldn’t part with—

they are all fragments of the could-have-been.

Of two hearts

that once tried to meet

somewhere between the living and the not.

I didn’t know I was building a shrine—

I thought I was just trying to survive. 

More from Elle Zaspel ↓

• @moonvinegrief on Instagram
• She publishes Howl & Hold: A Grief Zine. Issue 1 is out now. Paper copy. Electronic copy.