the edge of grief

I have good minutes and terrible seconds. I have long hours and short days. It defies mathematics and challenges logic. The extremes seem so close together that they are almost touching. But there's also a chasm so wide that sometimes I can't even see the other side of what's right there. My heart twists inside of the bones that confine it ... or protect it, right now I'm not sure which it is. The throb of memories surge into my sleep and drain the ache of them into tears. I cry them without knowing. I wake up accepting that my lungs must have found a way to breathe under water.  I watch awakening dust dance in a stream of morning sunshine and I want to not breathe. I just want to watch for awhile.  Being here like this changes things ... deep things. Broken places are different now... some are filled in and smoothed over and I pretend to forget. Some have new cracks and bleed jagged pain and great loss.  There's great contradiction that's at war with itself but battles on for the weeks, months and years as they shave off their seconds, leaving gold dust to dance in the pathway of tomorrow's sunshine. And I lay there knowing that this place will become my friend for awhile ... and that grief is often too much to comprehend ... and so I don't. And for once, that's ok ....