Grief is a fickle thing.

It has such a different, unidentifiable shape compared to love, sadness, anger.

I can hold love in my heart, cradle it even. I know what it is.

I can allow myself to feel sadness, and nurture it with my tears. It is familiar.

I can throw my fists in the air holding my anger by the throat, feeding it all the more. I remember its poison in my mouth.

Grief hits you in so many different ways, in so many different moments, with so many different triggers.

I can shove it in the closet in the back of my mind and still feel loss, while being burdened by the immense weight of it.

Grief will wrap its hands around my heart and squeeze and squeeze until I am crying blood, yet afterwards it will be tender to me. My grief will brush my tears aside, sitting heavy within me, and then it will be lighter, bearable, for a while.

As often as I am able I push it away, gyving the grief to my will. This does not last long, but at least I can breathe for a moment. I will beat it to the ground until it is complacent.

I will feel all my grief later, when I can fall apart without falling to pieces.

And everything is manageable, I may even smile.

It is when I am in a crowed room, and I have never missed you more.

Grief hangs over my shoulders. I am alone without you here. I am in great, great pain.

I am standing here dying while living all the more, yet nothing shows except for my red cracked eyes.

All these people around me don’t know of your absence and my grief is killing me, yet no one even notices.