I sit in a chair in the backyard,
 in the sunshine and slightly not freezing.

 My heart goes warbly, 

It’s grief just asking for a favor,
 a few minutes,
 a chance to be heard.

So I do it.

 I think of the storm, 

I think of the flood,
 the water's hungry belly dragging trees, mountains, homes, and lives
 to someplace I could not follow.

 I think of the days and weeks after,
 the roads broken and crumbled,
 the stone-faced, mud-foot, iron-heart days
 where we trudged through just to help each other survive.

 I think about not being able to eat,
 sitting in the candlelight at the end of the day,
 and only feeling a shocked nothing.

Then finally, a breaking,
 waking up crying in my sleep one day out of a hundred,
 sobbing whole-bodied,

 Then getting right back to it.  

Attempted mending.

 Then crying became a thing of the past,
 at night I would only have a tiny string of whimpers
 escaping my mouth and lungs before sleep pulled me under.

I wore what felt like a life vest of unfeeling,
 a stone-like protection of survival
 woven with threads of what needed to be 

spun with the magic of care and hope.

My hands shook uncontrollably for weeks;
 the only remedy was doing.

 I envied those who wept,
 their shoulders heaving like soft rivers.
 I tried but could not summon the flood in myself.

I wrestled with a dry grief so thick,
 I needed to call my mother.

 And now, 100-plus days later,
 sitting here melting away these stories in the sun,
 grief, a dark hawk, a shapeshifter, circles low,
 its shadow brushing against me,
 and demanding a seat at my table.

So we sit here,
 admiring each other,
 trading silence for breath,
 and wondering what to call this something
 that is just too heavy to name.