This is Your Grief

You are alone. There is trauma between your teeth, your mouth is full of blood, your head is full of ghosts and your empty hands are stuffed in pockets full of grief. Your indifference to this gnarly Universe of jagged edges and endless tragedies — has hit its peak. Overwhelmed by the outpouring of pity and exhausted from over thinking, this is the loneliest place to be. Wayward emotions submerge you in your own ocean, a castaway with heavy limbs resigned to isolation — drowning as you breathe. Every ray of sun hits your skin differently now. Your mind creates compositions from broken pieces of memory, so out of reach — but vivid somehow. Monochromatic silent film clips of the way things used to be, colliding into each other like poorly organised slides, disturbing all attempts at dwelling in peace or possibility.

You walk on. Wandering the Earth — unsure of the ground beneath your feet or the stars above your head. You’re imploding with rage that sets off tiny riots inside your veins. A hurricane has taken refuge inside your chest, your lungs are full of debris and smoke. With every word you speak, you almost choke from the lump — that’s made a home — in the back of your throat. Nobody knows this — but you. When blessed enough to be in the midst of good company, you just want to say something, you just long to feel anything that isn’t your grief.

You drive through your city, a metropolis as sleepless as you. With weary eyes battling the artificial night lights — you peer into the glass of your rear-view. Staring back at a version of you that’s quickly fading away into yesterday. You blow them one last kiss and watch on — as the bridge between you goes down then up in flames. Soon enough you’ll be squinting at the Sun, eyes wandering along the horizon as you balance on the edge of despair. The morning and this living — will demand you shake the ashes from your tail feathers and adore the sunrise.

With everything before you — and nowhere to go, you glimpse the beauty created and repeated throughout this disastrous life. You know, everybody knows — nobody will make it out of this thing alive. As you fall and fly through ends and beginnings that intersect like sunsets and moonlight, sometimes, you will be callously broken open. Each time, you will be meticulously reconstructed, never meant to remain quite the same. You will go on tripping over your own feet and endure the clipping of your wings — as you slowly realign your stuttering heart beats.

This is your grief.