Life fractures swiftly—the hourglass cracks,
A hearth’s warm comfort, then all goes black.
An ordinary life, so vivid and serene,
Splinters in silence where joy once had been.

Grief is a wave that knows no shore,
It knocks us down, then returns for more.
We ride each surge, unmoored, undone—
A tide that ebbs, but whose haunting is never outrun.

We bargain with shadows that linger and stare,
Whispering pleas to the unanswering air.
We line up their shoes in the still of the room,
Clinging to rituals that cannot exhume.

Magical thinking—the last thread we spin,
A tapestry woven when hope is worn thin.
The mind, in its orbit, circles the dread:
How can it fathom a loved one is dead?

Memory loops, a fevered reel unspooled,
Unending “What if”s, relentless and cruel.
Did love not matter, did faith not bind tight,
When fate’s blind hand extinguished the light?

We read, we study—grasp for command,
As if wisdom could sculpt with a trembling hand.
We gather the fragments, patch words to the whole,
Yet knowledge dissolves at the edge of the soul.

At the threshold of night where all certainties break,
We find only silence in sorrow’s deep wake.
The mind, once a lantern, flickers and waits
Where randomness rises and meaning abates.

The rituals finished, the ashes sealed in stone,
Yet absence still lingers in rooms once our own.
No priest, no chant, no marble’s cold grace
Can conjure the warmth of a vanished embrace.

Dependency, a double edge, both shelter and snare—
Was marriage our anchor, or hope in thin air?
We walked once as one, now shadows aligned,
Bereavement carves hollows in heart and in mind.

So life resumes—each day a hollowed role,
Each moment echoing fractures of the soul.
We gather the pieces of laughter and pain,
Haunted by shadows memory cannot contain.

We live, we love, we lose, and we ache,
Carrying absence in every breath we take.
Yet out of the wreckage, one truth we will claim:
To grieve is to honor, and keep memory’s flame.