The Weight of Tea

Everything feels
how I imagine astronauts
feel that first night home, being
pressed into their mattress
and the labor of breathing
air five times as heavy.

The weight of it—
the shape of grief:
a mug of tea
in my cupped hands.

I feel weak or maybe
gravity got stronger
in the moments between
when you were dead
and when I found out.

No one’s supposed to die
in May, in such a sunny month.
No one’s supposed to die
in the spring, at age nineteen.

I hold the tea and drink it
but do not taste it,
do not feel the burning,
only the weight of
a single mouthful.

I forget how heavy
water is and think of carrying
plastic buckets at the beach and think
of holding whole oceans.

What’s that metaphor for dying?
A river that leads into the ocean?

Thomas gave Jack his stash 
of weed in the blue cooler.

We smoked after his funeral
a spreading of ashes, in a sense.
For once, I didn’t care
about getting in trouble
or Jack driving high.

We used Thomas’s Bob Marley grinder
listened to “Could You Be Loved.”
Jack told Siri to flip a coin 
to see if Thomas wanted us
to take another hit.

He said no, so we didn’t.
It was beautiful and absurd
and more divine than the service
under the white tent at the church 
that felt like a high school reunion
except I couldn’t breathe and
I hugged people tightly.

I want to ask the astronauts:
do you feel more or less important
after seeing earth from a distance?
And either way, when do you adjust
to the weight of it all?