There’s a sound to grief.
It’s a guttural wail, welling up,
The rush of a geyser blasting against gravity
through a derrick of false control.
It’s the sound of snot bubbles popping
and the sound of inimitable gasps for air since
the hole is not wide enough for the pain to escape.
It’s the excruciating sound of molecules reconciling what cannot be with what is now.
It’s the sound of a world ripped, like tornado lightning.
I’ve seen this sound.
It comes when a person’s perception slams
into a slab of concrete of this is it. Never more.
No two paths in a wood, no divergence.

And at the very bottom, there are glints of light
breaking through the nothingness of the moment.
There are echoes of what was that can be remembered
and even loved again.