Grief

It’s strange: It’s complex, this world of ours. Simultaneously may be seen the wink of giddy, of breezy conversation, of laughter and ecstasy, while smack against such rapture rubs the dank of despair and the bleed of disappointment. Profound desolation to repudiate any thought of understanding flaps about as does a winter cloak ‘neath dark and heavy sky.

Grief.

Not eager, but with dutiful approach I moved into the shadowy circle of one and two and then another, who at once is leaded with such anguish as to have taken on semblance of the wild. A new friend gawked with pale terror as I came into his space. His mouth moved to tell me, but the sound was fisted in his sick stomach and only his lips moved, and he was a fish sucking air. He fell, and then came voice,  moaning as he beat at the pavement. Useless we stood about. I raised my eyes and met those of another, and thought of ambulance and white coat.

We embraced, did she and I, and she could not speak; sounds came, and maybe they were words, but I believe they were not.

Anguish had paled his face so that his hue of eye was diluted and the sockets were huge; huge and white and dried. “What can I do? What can I do?” He slumped onto his arms atop the hard table, and there across from me was his quivering torso and his vulnerable sweet head. “Oh, God, help me. Help her,” he wailed. “What can I do?”

Smack against the trill of joyous life, of euphoria and exhilaration lie unspeakable grief and dark agony. Coexisting, at once they are inevitable parts of life.