Untitled #4

Written November 19, 2007

I walk home in the cold frosty November air and I am reminded of a sad song. But I can’t remember the name, I can’t remember who sang it. I can only remember how hearing that song made me feel. There is one light on in my apartment building but I know no one is home. I am the only one. I am here and no one is around to see it. The light burns blue and I notice a notice on the door. A clean white sheet of paper written in agony, sealed with tears. A woman’s son has died. A woman on my block has lost her son tonight; she will say her prayers and his too. She will never again tell him to pick up his clothes, to not ride his bike in the street, to not talk to strangers, to not hit his sister. She will sleep in his bed tonight; she will hold his baby boy scent close to her so she might never forget. So that she might hold his memory for one minute longer. This is the feeling of loss; this is what it feels like to feel. My grandfather couldn’t get up. A son dies on a bridge. A young woman dies of a rare blood disease. And yet we still continue to get up in the morning. We brush our teeth and we eat our breakfast while taking our vitamins. We shower and pick up clothes and we go to work. A childless mother, a friendship remembered through a scrapbook, a desperate attempt to hold on to those we love but we have lost. We all cry ourselves to sleep at night.