Sometimes, you feel something and then read someone else’s words describing the very thing you’re feeling and it feels like maybe all is right in the world, like maybe someone else gets it and you’re not actually as alone as you think you are. I stumbled across sixteen lines, a few simple words, that mean everything. (This is why I love poetry so.)
The Thing Is
By Ellen Bass
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.