On Grief

It was on the last Wednesday of August that I found out you died. It was raining. It reminded me of another Wednesday in August, six years ago, when I found out a classmate had died. Except it was sunny then. To be clear, I don’t believe that Wednesdays or August or the weather had anything to do with this morbid coincidence. But still, it’s the weekend now and I try desperately to dispel the waning legacy of winter that has etched itself into my skin. I buy you fresh flowers, go for a swim in the river and heave spring into my lungs. Very cosmopolitan as you’d say.

In this grief, I’m returning to my nascent self, demurred in the pale September rain and repenting for the cigarettes I’ve smoked since you’ve passed.

Do you remember how we used to joke that our youth has come to an end? I guess it was only funny because we knew that it hadn’t. I can still see us now, flaunting our youth as if we had centuries to figure things out; we’d have long nights that made our mornings unbearable and we’d sit there wondering if we’d ever get any wiser. I suppose I am now. But this isn’t the wisdom I bargained for, I think to myself, what are centuries? What is youth? I hack out each day and it’s a century to me.

Anyway, over the horizon, the waves seem small so I suppose that this life must be plain. The winter bears down for a long, hard while and then I am reborn, lazarus-style, in spring. Time passes and I return, once again, to carry your heart in my hands, your heart in my hands.