Grief is like a storm,
emotional turmoil overwhelms the senses;
When the tempest of agony strikes one's feelings,
the wind of distress hits him defenseless.
Grief is like a shipwreck,
where a life's voyage suddenly plunges into ruin;
The sunken victim of devastating sorrow
cannot sail but wail from within.
Grief is like an empty chair,
where someone's absence leaves a space behind;
The felt sadness sits in the vacuum,
filling up the blank heart, soul, and mind.
Grief is like a broken mirror,
a shattered self that collapses afterward;
The severed spirit stares at the splintered pieces,
seeing nothing but tears reflected in the shards.
Grief is like a dried riverbed,
the inner gap where joy once flowed abundantly;
When the water of laughter runs dry,
the drained smile turns into misery.
Flavours of grey, brown,
and green.
Heavy , thick cottons
hanging by threat
of lightning,
waiting calmly
before an incredible
downpour and
thunderstorms.
As it sweeps through
cracks and soil,
covering every
pitfall.
Careful car rides
through roads,
not wanting to be part
of mechanical disaster.
Scent of wet mud,
a sign from afar,
and afterward,
leftover effect.
Doesn’t know between
city and empty lands
as wind passes through.
But dust moves free
in the emptiness
of no tree or homes,
rises high and,
like a crazy predator ,
sinks its teeth
into every surface,
covering all.
And allergy and
cleaning floors
are its aftereffect.
Dew-covered,
lush leaves
are better than
humans’ case .
As roots drink like
a thirsty man in desert,
or the chore of bringing
fresh bread from
bakery in mid-afternoon.
No Halloween celebration,
but cleaning companies.
No pumpkins,
but dust and storms.
Yet we love it all—
our motherland,
Sudan .
By the time weather has thinned our names on stone,
by the time wedding china sleeps
beneath attic dimness
and careful hands divide
the relics of our brief occupancy,
something of us is already elsewhere.
A woman pauses once beside a river carrying snowmelt.
Years later, a child she never knew
develops a habit of lingering
near moving water, unable to explain the pull.
A man looks up from a gas station pump
to watch geese cross a bruised November sky.
Decades later, someone abandons a troubling thought
simply to follow dark wings threading the clouds.
The world administers its exchanges invisibly.
We leave traces in the grammar of other lives:
a manner of listening, a particular mercy,
the instinct to choose wonder over certainty.
These travel farther than memory,
like seeds hidden in the cuffs of a traveler’s coat.
Perhaps death is not a vanishing, not an ending
but a breaking open of these bright
unnoticed fragments entrusted to wind.
Long afterward, someone beneath
an unfamiliar constellation
will turn toward beauty
for no discernible reason,
never knowing they have wandered briefly
through the weather of another soul.
When going to school at a tender age,
The little girl would put on her socks and shoes,
Give her parents a goodbye kiss,
And run out with her school bag and lunchbox,
A smile upon her face, filled with joy and happiness,
Excited to learn a new word from her teacher.
Days turned into months,
And months into years,
Until finally came her graduation day—
The day she would leave those beautiful school days behind.
Afterward, her school uniform and school necessities
Rested quietly in the wardrobe,
Becoming memories of her beautiful early days.
She looked at them, sighed, and said,
"Indeed, this is where you finally ended,
After being with me through my beautiful early days." ??
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.
They built him where the cliffs outlived the storms,
stone stitched to stone by hands that feared surrender.
His windows faced the horizon,
yet none were made to open.
The gulls called every morning.
He answered only with echoes.
Winters polished his walls into silver,
summers baked silence into every crack.
Travelers praised his strength,
never noticing the ivy growing inward.
One autumn, the tide stopped asking permission.
It climbed the rocks
not with rage,
but patience—
a language granite never learned.
Night after night
the sea rehearsed the same sentence
until the cliffs began repeating it
in their sleep.
No tower collapsed.
No banner fell.
Yet somewhere beneath the oldest stone,
where no map had ever reached,
a single drop of saltwater
remembered
it had once belonged
to an ocean.
And that was enough.
For years afterward,
the castle remained exactly as it had always seemed—
except that every sunrise,
those who listened carefully
could no longer tell
whether the wind
was leaving,
or something inside
had finally begun
to breathe.
It seems to me,
That in my younger years,
I would not procrastinate.
But I would first evaluate.
Then, I would calculate.
Afterward, I would vacate.
I'm aging now,
And it seems to me that
I only want to 'staycate'.
In the early Christian writings, during the time of Jesus (peace be upon him) and for a short period afterward, Jesus (peace be upon him) taught people what had been revealed to him and also explained the Torah to them. He was called the Master. The Master traveled from village to village teaching people the Law. However, in later Christian writings—the second and third centuries and beyond—the Master became Lord and God, and this occurred within a year, according to the book by Abd al-Ahad Dawud (The Gospel and the Cross).
In too short,
Jesus story
True is true
I laid down a heavy burden called yesterday,
another called tomorrow,
and finally one called today.
Afterward I felt an infinite lightness surround me
buoyed by the breezes embracing the eternal present
which never leaves and which we leave
at our own peril and to our own dismay:
There is not another
just the one that is us and our own self
resting in the embrace of timeless praise.
Christopher M. Swan 2008
Engines snarl the quiet open. Our street forgets its name and becomes a dare. Headlights stitch the midnight dark too fast to hold, mailboxes flinch, trees lean back.
Tires scream first, then the sirens, blue red prayers bouncing off porches, windows waking like startled eyes. Someone laughs. Someone swears. Time skids sideways.
The cars vanish, but the echo keeps racing, heart still pinned to the redline, long after the law and the boys are gone.
Afterward, the street exhales. Oil hangs in the air like a secret. Dogs bark at nothing. A loose can rolls, applause with no hands. Tomorrow, chalk lines, rumors, scorch marks, proof that for seconds, speed owned us, and we let it.
© daniel miltz
What if we never meet
or I had never looked
into your eyes or saw that pretty smile
you have such a pretty smile
What if I hadn't had that first kiss
or smeeled that arousing perfume
or we hadn't gone
to the concert under the moon
that late night supper
when we first held hands
or the theather when afterward
we went to dance
what if
I ask you what if
unlike you I still shy away
sometimes there's something
i want to say
I start to speak but I stop
to look you in your eyes
I like it when you steer and ask me why
it's our thing we've
done it all along
expectually when we hear our favorite song
what if it wasn't cool
and i had never bought you
that specail jewel
what if the ring didn't fit
or I had given in
and had up and quit
what if my proposal was rejected
or our love was neglected
what if God's Love didn't shine down
no support for our love
and no one was around
what if
what if
what if
There is so much I would love to change
I think about it all the time
with a bit of regret
believing I could have taken the pen and written,
then perhaps the story would have changed
Now that time has locked me into a loop
I'd step back to that day when my eyes felt blurry
first, I would look at the baby photos
remembering in the future, they had burned down like old love letters,
from a soldier who died in battle,
fragile like they were never meant to be lost, like they deserved a different fate
I would whisper to younger me
I would tell her, wake mommy up
and I would say this with tears
remembering how she had turned into ashes
And hopefully, when time finally closes its loop
I would wake up with a better tomorrow
with her voice singing my favorite lullaby
with the smell of her scent that I never seemed to forget
and in every embrace afterward,
I would hold her tighter.
Give your mind a chance
To think deeply until trance
Nice nap afterward.
Fuscus Belcanto
the "exemplum"
interupted the scene when
the instructers
trow biscuits at the fatter
people to illustrate to the healthier people
how a fatter people responds to certain things.
When they changed to yeast rolls
one instructed stood in the way
to get the first of the warm
treats. This made the fatter people
to think this person suported there point of view, he didn't
and doing the discussions afterward
the people who liked the yeast rolls out numbered the
people who liked the biscuits.
But they were asked to do a summation
to create phrases that
could be used tin a song. The song was meant to be sweet
and the Cantrix was already
signed to a contract
they just needed a song
thats way they did this to these people.
From the Book Fat Shamed
or Phat Shamed
By Decressia Mennis
of Flourboard Expressions
The Hot water will spoil the
your plans if it aint the right temperture
Seems like only yesterday we carved our names in the bark of an old oak,
Each letter was a promise of tomorrow and forever, dreams of our future together~
Endless time, though each moment flitted by like a firefly at twilight,
Moving in and out of focus as we tried to catch the starlit skies
So close and yet so far.
Lightly did the world rest
In our love like a feather
Keeping us warm in the fabric of time,
Each moment creating a memory.
Years pass by and are scattered like leaves in the autumn breeze
Entering at the cold threshold of winter, the fabric no longer keeps us warm,
Seams start to unravel as life becomes a threadbare rag where beauty once created patterned
Tapestries of color,
Each thread wrapped around the presence of your laughter and spirit of you becoming one with me~
Roughly life has taken the half of me that was you,
Death is the curtain through which you have passed and through which I will soon follow,
Afterward the stars may write our epilogue as we journey in realms unseen,
Yet our names will remain carved in the bark of that old oak.
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