After Grief

For a long time
I built a structure out of grief.

Stone after stone
I raised it carefully,
thinking this was devotion.

If I knelt beside it
long enough
the world would make sense.

I counted injuries.
I named them truth.

Morning came and went.
Seasons changed.

Still I stayed there,
keeping watch
over what had already ended.

Then one day
something small interrupted me.

A bird lifting into the air
from the edge of the woods.

The sound of water
moving over stone.

Nothing extraordinary.
The world simply continuing.

It seemed almost careless
in its beauty.

Grass beginning again.
Branches thick with buds.
Light widening in the east.

I looked back
at the thing I had made.

It was only stone.

No voice lived in it.
No breath.

I had mistaken
persistence
for meaning.

So I left it there
beside the path.

Not destroyed.
Just abandoned.

The morning was quiet.

The fields
held their pale flowers.

Even the wounded earth
was beginning again.

I am not healed.

The shadow remains.

But somewhere beneath it
something small
has started to move.