Grief
Grief is not the body in the earth;
it is what happens to the room afterward.
A cup remains beside the sink.
Someone's coat survives the winter.
The ordinary continues
with an almost offensive competence.
Here is the absurdity:
we are forced to carry a thing that has no mass.
An empty chair becomes heavier with years.
A number remains in the phone
long after there is anyone left
who could answer it.
We make a sanctuary of the wound
because pain becomes evidence.
For a while, suffering is the closest thing
we have to touching them.
To hurt less feels dangerous,
as though love itself
might be measured by what continues to hurt.
Then comes the quieter loss.
You realize you are no longer only mourning them;
you are mourning your own failing capacity
to mourn them as you once did.
Your lungs adapt, day by day, to the empty air.
You laugh without guilt.
An afternoon passes without remembering.
And this is what no one warns you about:
one day their absence becomes familiar.
Not smaller.
Not repaired.
Familiar.
You would give anything
to be devastated again
with the precision
of the first morning.
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