There is the experience of loss
Of the dead, for sure
Kept alive in short spells of recounting
Feeling their presence in doses 
Appropriate to the moment
Reliving feelings, happy, hearty, hard
Or just a lot of hard work
Dry and unfeeling
Till the stories are less about them
And more about oneself—
The price and privilege of one’s connection.

There is the experience of loss
Of those whose absence is certain
But whose fate much less so
A past one invokes
Now and then with a choke
For the longest time 
In an ambiguous tense
Where grieving cannot be provisional
Or postponed
Puzzling over reasons, a dead end
And search for meaning, a fool’s errand

There is the experience of loss 
Of those who live 
So near, yet so far
Goodbyes foretold
Where the sun and the moon rise unfailingly 
But one only sees the dark
Adrift in another time and space 
Searching, gasping, flailing
Freezing, alone, no one to own 
Until life ebbs, condemned 
To join the living dead.

Image: PxHere