Elegy For Someone Else’s Sister

Grief's speed travels fast nowadays on lines
through the air, the ground, the shrunken sky.
A moment explodes like an atom parsed
by words sparked immediate electrically.

Her name's my love's name, her loss but a little
forwewarning, a ripple that's gone before long,
an echo best freed for the airways, her name
a chorus in somebody else's song

this time. Your news is almost PSed,
tagged onto the end of a message full
of life's small dramas, and this one rendered
huge by appearing so minuscule.

"My sister died last night, suddenly."
No warning, no intake of steadying breath,
and she's gone, just like that, like a message
deleted, a receiver replaced, into death.

Films don't exist of these things, we can't watch
endless re-runs, rewind, play forward, pause.
The only end credits we write for ourselves
endlessly, the sound mute, the picture long off.

Time grows on words made real, dilute
grief's speed into something tangible.
These words are the hands reaching over to slow
& capture & give to you that time.