what is grief if not love persevering?

To be able to feel

or hold the quality of love

we are all seeking

we must be willing

to feel the pain of past

loves and loss

as well as accumulated

sorrows and unmourned experiences

in our bodies and life

I’ve been told that

sorrow prepares you for joy

It violently sweeps everything out

so that new joys have space to enter

But healing is not about replacing

No two lovers feel exactly alike

nor two loves fill our hearts identically

There’s a space reserved in time for

that singular love that will

never be painted over

Sorrow serves as a reminder

to enjoy the moments

before they become memories

They tell me time will heal

but that doesn’t work when

you number the days

counting the hours

Constantly calculating the absence

We organize time into boxes

as if it’s neat when really

grief is not meant to live

in calendar days

It has every right to bleed

It’s brutal the way we assign

urgency to processing

When they ask

I refuse to say it got easier

but my grief did change

I stopped crying everyday

I smiled again

I cope with the loss

as best I can

I learned to live again

with the void next to me

Coping doesn’t mean I’ve moved on

it didn’t mean I love any less

I won’t say it will get easier

because living a life

without someone you love

is never going to be easy

Grief is all of the unexpressed love that

we don’t get the chance to share with

the person or thing we lost

what is grief if not love persevering?