Still here.

I suppose his bones are dust by now. Why can't my grief be like that? It should have crumbled apart and settled into the dark earth that is my past. Why is it still here? How do I bury my grief? I carry it around with me everywhere, and it just won't die.

People die so easily. No matter how, that final moment, that very last moment when they pass from life to death, is so simple and straightforward:  they're here, they're gone.

Why can't grief die, too? I want to sentence my grief to death. I want to murder it savagely or mercifully, but quickly, but I don't. I carry it around with me everywhere, like a corpse that will not rot.

Banging doors is better.

Words are wonderful weapons
and words my special skill
so when I'm passive-aggressive
be glad my tongue stays still

A door slammed twice
A teaspoon flung
into a kitchen sink
a cigarette
some Valium
a syringe
another drink

These are the ways
people try to tell
express the pain
of their personal hell
I know these ways
I knew them well
so I'll say it just once more

Words are wonderful weapons
and words my special skill
so when I'm passive-aggressive
be glad my tongue stays still
my actions will only piss you off
but my words
would shoot to kill.

Mockery in pink (and red, yellow and white).

It's not that they are mocking me. They can't help themselves. They are beautiful, and blooming. That's all they know.

I chose them for their colours:  red, yellow, pink and white; when I went to change the water this afternoon, I found them still vibrant, still alive. It hurt.

Three things, I found, are excruciating to encounter when grieving.

One is laughter from a group of people at the next table in a cafe. It burbles out of their throats so easily, while I struggle to swallow just one sip of a comforting coffee.

One is the sound of a child's voice, the opposite of death. It rings with her hope, but echoes my despair, magnifying my awareness of time running out. Of loss, and losses to come.

And one is the beauty of nature that shines out as a moon or a star or a flower, completely without empathy it would seem, just being what it is:  an amazing, eternally renewing mystery.

Unlike me.