a blessing for when you’ve lost someone far too soon

God, this. This is impossible.

This grief is too much to bear.

If there was a tight order
to the world that you made,
it’s come unspooled
and no one will wind it up again.

God, I feel it coming,
that ache for the stories that will never be told.
And an anger rising
when i remember
what never should have been.

Worst of all – God, could anything be worse? –
it is so beautiful
the way this grief is a language of love.

I am lovesick with this much sorrow.
Teach me to speak this new mother tongue.
Show me how to memorize
what I can never forget
what they gave and what is gone,
and what we were owed
by a world robbed of their presence.

Hold me by the edges
for I am coming apart.
And nothing but love
will find me.

Adapted for a communal setting from THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE, page 80