We grieve hopelessly, sputtering breathes hitching in our throats

Questions for the universe and the heavens above formed on our lips 

Try to outline our pain into a person 

Try to conserve her in photographs and shirts and memories and words

But words will always be futile devices

How will we ever recover?

How can we ever move on?

Songs of lament escaping our diaphragm, our upturned faces pleading the sky for comfort

It is silent in spite of us

We grieve hopefully, memories whispered in the dark of the evening 

Hands involuntarily reaching and grasping each other for comfort, for connection 

“She is still here” we tell ourselves, rivers of clear, warm pain escaping our eyes, decorating our cheeks 

because to remember is to hurt, and yet she is worth the voluntary heartbreak

In our grief she is closer than ever

Or so we say 

As her smell fades from bedsheets and pillowcases, and the details of memories we swore 

We would never forget are now fading into blur and our own fabrication

We forget what her voice sounds like for just a second 

We grieve hopelessly

 pressing our hands against our hearts in futile attempts to stop the bleeding 

We ask ourselves again how we will ever recover

How we will ever move on

Ask ourselves if we even want to, 

leave the question hanging in the heavy empty air 

We rush at the barricades of time, try to pry through dimensions

Turn back time, words, places

tear and plaster the world into a place where there was not this infernal absence 

Where our hearts were not paper macho, shredding with the elements 

And the worst part is the hopelessness 

All encompassing, loud, static moving silence

The empty stretching hands we possess

Reaching towards nothing, towards the heavens, towards the cross, towards old dusty pictures 

We will try it all and then not try at all 

try not to keel over when the waves of weight hit your midsection 

Grief, a physical reaction

We grieve

Loudly and then quietly 

Its strange 

To grieve equal parts hope and hopelessness

We will go to bed crying 

And wake up just as the sun remembers the world it left for the night 

And for a second we forget she is gone 

until.