Small Pieces of Being

We are a million hours of time
away from the boy who wrote
poems and drew pictures --
and the girl so excited to read them,
to know him, to love him.

Those children lost in the fogs
of doing adulthood --
The Serious Business of Living --
That Delusion --
Teaching them to hide away
in the dark shadows -- alone.

Grief is a selfish master.
His remembering what is lost
always living that past image.
The dearness of it roots the tears,
forces the chest to grow upward
in swelling pain.

We grieve the possibility
that died. The honesty we forsook.
We grieve what could have been
if we were other than we are.
We grieve the hours spent believing
we could be anything and everything
to each other -- those doors
always closing in silence, the noise
of our breaking heart the only sound
left echoing through the room.