Fires of Anguish, Winds of Grief (Raw Draft)
It begins with joy, always
The deepest sort
A sort that shapes your soul
Into a better being
In such a way that was impossible
to do on your own.
That joy becomes inverted
In a sudden, violent shift.
Not quite the Tarot opposite
But altogether quite worse
A harbinger of grief, not grief itself.
The merest, beginning ember.
Feel all of your hope peeled away
Every layer, dried dust blowing away
From a field where nothing takes root.
Still clinging to the memory of the joy.
The hope eventually is extinguished
Yet, the peeling continues slowly.
Trapped between what the joy was to be
And the reality that will become
One can feel each grain of sand
Slowly drift to an ultimate conclusion
The agony of it feels never-ending
Yet cling to it, for the anguish will be much worse.
The dusk of the journey approaches
The son you ached for is born
The briefest reminder of joy, tasted
Until you see the wound, the flaw
Destined to end his fragile life
To end all of your simple dreams.
You hold him, watching each breath
You share him, yet not wanting to let go
Selfishly waiting to embrace him again.
You hold him, 'til his final breath is exhaled.
You think the sand has run out.
You are still so very wrong.
You watch your wife sleep,
Exhausted from her own journey
While you cradle you dead son in your arms, alone
A brief, reprise of peace.
A quiet requiem
A time you can finally weep alone.
You take your hardest step,
Then another, then one more.
A repeatable pattern, yet one that approaches an ending
You feel the stares, yet they do not know,
Save for the pain etched in your face.
Every step, the sound of a grain of sand falling
in the hourglass
There are so few left.
You lay the baby down,
Blanketing him as if it is for a nap.
A parental, instinctual thing.
For he hasn't breathed in an hour
Every movement of fatherhood,
There are so few left.
You feel other's try to pull you away.
You are not ready to part,
You were never ready to let go.
You were never truly given a choice.
You hear the door to his chariot close.
You hear a wailing, your own.
Yet it seems like a stranger.
The anguish, an acid on the soul.
Dissolving.
A few days later,
A few lifetimes of torment,
You bury your son
That you knew for minutes
Yet forever.
You say your words,
For either no one else had them
Or no one else could.
The wind blows in the yard
Grief finally introduces itself.
Yet, It takes Its time to get acquainted
It shows you all that has become broken
The depths of the holes left in anguish's wake.
The deep, gouged changes within
The vast, smothered changes without
It is in the aftermath, where grief is truly felt.
In the ruins of life,
Where ashes and dust remain,
And the bitter knowledge that
You must rebuild
Something in this sacred space.