Grief is the heart feeling a phantom limb,
sweet memory, estrangement's vinegar,
the loss that never will unlose itself,
departure from which there is no return.

It is the strain of music cut off just
as the crescendo starts to swell and gather.
It is the thousand texts and conversations
that never will take place, except in dreams.

Grief is five white knuckles shaken at God,
the prayer refusing in its rage to pray,
the rosary of memories rehearsed

as if remembering could raise the dead,
as if the loved and lost could breathe again
through the defiant will of the bereaved.