Good Grief

Chinese Hibiscus , photo taken on June 10, 2024

Chinese Hibiscus, photo taken on June 11, 2024

I picked up the flower, placed it on the lap of my overly distressed cut-off shorts, and looked away. When I looked back down at her, she’d paired herself perfectly with a partner that had lived an equally beautiful life.

Grief is a room that has turned cold and no longer provides the same fiery warmth that enveloped you just a moment ago. She is frigid and hollow. And for reasons, she can not be renewed or uninhabited because this is your most frequented hiding spot. She is where you can be found when you feel the most guilt one could never fully express. Consistent.

Grief is the person that never truly knows if the friendship is compatible. They are familiar, painful, and full of memories, hurtful and otherwise. Is it betrayal to let go or am I just holding a door for a moment that was never going to cross my threshold? Unclear.

Grief finds itself infusing with the most insignificant spaces, just to be the most notable of them all. Famously and infamously entangling itself with everyone who’s anyone in a room of secret lovers, known to be in nonconsensual dynamics. It is engaging and disengaging all at once. Extraordinarily effective.

Grief bears the markings of sadness, kindness, and emotional sounds we have yet to find the words for, only experiences we share, set in dark corners full of burnt out candles, tobacco, sage, frankincense and coals. Dripped sandalwood in the air, trapping every attempt to escape. Burned out.

Grief holds like an ever-fluctuating weighted blanket; comforting compressions and suffocation. She turns off the lights and sits beside you until you fall asleep. She is no enemy or loved one. She is around. Necessary.