Nowhere to go

grief is love with nowhere to go.

it’s an aching for thoughts you can no longer know.

it’s the loss of future moments,

of promises,

of dreams,

reminding us our immortality is as fragile as it seems.

grief is the phone call you can no longer make

and your hand missing a hand you can no longer take.

it’s having to move forward,

move through,

move on,

even though your person is permanently gone.

grief is an echo of the laughter you hear

when your person is smiling from ear to ear.

it’s a joke with no punchline

no humor

no hope.

for your person was always the best half of the joke.

grief is love with nowhere to go

emptying our hearts of warmth and replacing it with snow.

it leaves us gasping

and heaving,

and strangling for breath,

as our bodies struggle to reconcile with the reality of death.

‘I’m sorry for your loss’ is an echo of what we fear the most;

Our lives filling up with ghost after ghost.