Grief

​That faint whispering that awakens us from our sleep, only to find silence:
Felt absence surrounding us again.
 
Grief comes in waves, but the red flag has waved unceasingly for too long
The crashing is loud, again and again, like curdling screams held inside us. 
 
Each of those numbers reported as deaths each day,
Each of them leave someone with tears streaming down their cheeks
Someone whose life feels like it is in a thick soup of cloud for the next year
A whole family being knocked over by the waves, unable to swim.
 
Dying is part of living and grief is profound.
But we are in an age of such vast grief that we cannot hold it.
 
We grieve the lives we are not living, the dreams that died.
We grieve the people we have lost to death or distances.
We grieve the connectedness that we no longer feel.
 
The heart strings that weave us together are neglected, fraying.
The profound beauty of grief feels blurry, and we are lost. 
 
We numb in distractions, isolated.
We fall asleep, again into dreams.