It doesn’t announce itself or knock
on the door of your heart. Suddenly

it’s right behind you,
looking with great pity

at the back of your neck
and your shoulders on which

it spends days placing a burden
and lifting it. Grief arrives

in its own sweet time, sweet
because it lets you know that

you are alive, time because
what you are holding becomes

the only day there is: the sun stops
moving, the sky grows utterly quiet

and impossibly blue. Behind the blue
are the stars we can’t see and beyond

the stars either dark or light,
both of which are endless.