Love Poem: The Nature of Mourning
James Ph. Kotsybar Avatar
Written by: James Ph. Kotsybar

The Nature of Mourning

It’s the quiet of the quiet moments
that brings painful shuddering awareness
that things are no longer the way they were
and will never be quite that way again.

It’s the hollowness of routine gestures
which once expressed love so casually
that they were as unconscious as breathing
that echoes sudden death’s meaninglessness.

It’s the emptiness of the empty rooms --
the pressure of a vacuum -- that draws
the body’s hydration out through the eyes
and suffocates what was accustomed joy.

It’s the unexpected desolation 
that passively inflicts deepest anguish.