When confronted by death I am full of useless impulses to be doing.

I think. I attempt poetry. I weep. I don’t want to eulogise. I look up rituals. I listen. I wait and cannot. I sleep, or try to. I wake, and try not to. I complete my usual household tasks. I watch grey clouds obscure the sunset. I walk, counting the cracks in the road. I stay still. I tell jokes. I am serious. I comfort and am comforted. I remember, because some dying recalls previous deaths.

There is nothing to be done, therefore, I write.

Is this exploitation of an impending event, and of my reaction? I listen to my quiet fingers on the keyboard as I type out these words; edit them, rewrite them, change their format. I try to reshape death, make it fit. I can’t; it doesn’t.

This is bitter because it tastes of too much I.

It’s not my farewell, this is just my grief, the weight of concern, amid teeming, circular thoughts of self and this new iteration of sorrow. If I cast them into the winter wind, will the air like a last breath catch them, and carry them for me?

Last light