No one can walk you through loss. No one can take your hand and say “walk with me..” and you comply and follow blindly. Floating through as an apparition, a thin hand passing over velvet. No. That is not the way to travel through grief. Grief comes at you like a sniper shot. A bullet ricochet. Tearing you apart as it enters and then exits your body.

No one takes your hand and guides you from the war that is your every day. Family and friends, lay their hands on you, hope to heal with words, as they push you forward. The hands are not for holding, they are for pushing. And you accept this. It is all they can do. If they love you, they will push.

Ever so gently.

Their love, like candles warming the night. The way illuminates in such care.

But, they will not take your hand. They will not guide you through the emptiness. The inky black expanse. Like tentacles biting at your ankles. You must kick free.

Loss is this.

A rusted iron anchor. as it carries you to the deep. The seagrass stirs in shadows. Singing the songs that whisper you to sleep. You forget there is a surface. A ceiling to your grief.

as you sink…and sink…..

and sink….

Kick.