Grief is an awkward creature.
It does not move
like anything I was taught to recognize;
no clean lines,
no predictable turns,
no warning before it shifts its weight
and knocks something over inside me.
It refuses choreography.
I make space for it;
clear a path,
set the fragile things out of reach,
but it never walks where I expect.
It brushes past what should shatter it
without reaction,
without even looking.
And then
without pattern,
without mercy
it collapses.
All of it,
all at once,
because of something small:
a sound,
a color,
a sentence half-heard
that reaches deep into the archives
of what I have lost
and pulls something forward
I wasn’t ready to see.
It melts down in the middle of everything,
and I am left holding it,
or being held by it
I can’t always tell which.
It clings.
That’s the strangest part.
It wraps itself around my ribs,
hooks into the spaces between breaths,
and stays there
even when it fades,
even when it quiets
and pretends to be gone.
Because it never really leaves.
It just slips into the background,
a shadow that has learned
how to mimic stillness.
But I can feel it moving.
Slinking.
Sliding.
Keeping pace just behind me
or just ahead,
its steps uneven;
a jerk,
a stumble,
a slow, dragging shuffle
that never quite matches my own.
Sometimes it sits with me.
Not across the room;
no,
it doesn’t grant that kind of distance.
It folds itself into the same chair,
angles its body in ways
that look uncomfortable
but never seem to resolve;
slouched,
twisted,
always collapsing inward
as if trying to take up less space
while somehow filling all of it.
Its hands are never still.
They fidget:
tangling in invisible threads,
picking at the edges of things
that aren’t there anymore,
tapping out a rhythm
that doesn’t belong to any song
I know.
Self-soothing,
I realize.
As if grief itself
is trying to comfort
what it has become.
And I live with it.
Make room where I can,
fail where I can’t,
learning that it does not follow rules
or timelines
or reason.
It only follows memory.
And memory,
like this creature,
does not move
the way you expect.
