We gathered around it
The way you do with grief
Looking in at the death, but not getting too close
Afraid it would touch us again
Afraid it would consume us with fear
Some deaths you can accept eventually
Part of the natural order of things
Even though Time, that bitch
Is ever looming
Making everything more immediate than it should be
Other deaths hit you in the gut
Shocking and inescapable
A dark blotch on a green and black screen
Where once luminosity beat, syncopated and fast
Now nothing
We peered at it
But did not poke
Inside the death only in our dreams
And the daily calls to a psychic friend of a friend
Anything to make it through that dark time
We prayed for the other one to live
Without a formal approach
Or eve an agreed upon deity
Any port in a storm
Isn't that what they say?
I shouldn't have cried so much at the beginning
When they were both alive inside me
It was a simple, shocking grief
Unexpected and unrelated to what would come later
Real loss
We gathered together
Trying to make sense of her absence
Praying to an unknown god or goddess
Let her sister live
When she was born
I alone said goodbye
A warm stone on my chest
My living baby in my arms
Tears too physically painful to release
We gathered around it
Death, then life
Prayed and held back against the terror of more
Loss
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