Words cannot echo mood,

It is impossible to convey

The tingling numbnesses

Of grief.

She died today - not yesterday - 

A young woman: ordinary, happy, ill.

The semi-detached daze

Of an icy clinging depression;

The tight closing-in upon oneself

That foreshadows pent up tears.

And years of fighting to be well

Despite the fear that accompanies

Nearly everything I do,

Fear meanders like a Mississippi ox-bow lake,

And can take years to return as a flood-tide

To knock me off my feet,

And gather to a greatness

All the threads of all the uncompleted hesitations of my life,

Decisions and revisions, passing consolations,

That always leave me in this bloody mess

Of sense impressions.

Each contradictory set

Of firings in the brain

Sets me on this rocky road

Again.