i am about to kill god

The grieved are many, I am told;
The reason deeper lies,--
Death is but one and comes but once
And only nails the eyes.

- Emily Dickinson, "I Measure Every Grief I Meet"


He suddenly becomes real again: a mere worn pair of Nike shoes with stuffing spilling from unravelling seams, a flung-out history worth of a decade pops and deflates at the mention of the term of endearment "Daddy". Laughter slinks through the cracks in the floor ashamed it once danced off these echoing walls.

Air used to escape painfully. Sobs of agony could only describe the foreign sound: crying in the house that magnified the grief; that trembled and threatened to fall out of the sky like the death rain that extinguished his life.

But, not today. Only silence and anger that resurface - on my part. It can only be a sin to breathe again. I read, listen in horror silently. Yes, this is reality, thinking she had not thrown them away. Such anger in the key of despair contrasted with the selfish tears: I have not had a last look at them.

The clock has finally wrapped its hands around my eyes long enough, choking them with winter frost, squeezing out the life. Yet, I can't watch his fate unfold in mathematical form. Those numbers I never knew. When will it shatter and reveal the black hole I have been trying to conceal? It is inevitable: I feel the bridge is falling apart.

Perhaps, it's the strong refusal to believe I have drifted from him because of the distance and time.The clouded and clogged voices I once had to speak of him: with fake laughs and sympathy - four years - is that all I am given? And I shall count on:

1, 2, 3, 4 ...

The immortality of his spirit, his ever-lingering legacy, the fuel of faith. But so too, the fuel of grief. I know now - the cruellest aspect of life. It goes on. It simply goes on.