Mourning

Mourning with one's body.

When they danced their version of mourning i am able to feel my own loss. their jagged movements, slow and deliberate, delicate and intense, their dance of raw being, of living and suffering somehow created a space that enabled concentration. a space that allowed me to look straight and not to the side. a sad silent space of understanding.

There are many kinds of mourning. mourning of death. mourning of loss, of the irretrievable nature of certain things that happened in our lives. things that we cheerish and adore, things we wish we had a little bit more of. more time. more love.
more time. more love.
more time.

there are mournings that hover over you like a darkened cloud, heavy and wanting to rain. but unable to. you expect a downpour every second, only to hold your breath. one minute. two minutes. three days. four months... it hovers. and you anticipate rain every minute. and you keep anticipating. one day it'll pour. and then, not only the rain will wear you out. the waiting has.

i have never been to a single funeral. death came in words over the phone lines. more than once. a week late. unexpected. cold. unclear. with realizations always a year too late. with its heavy drooping clouds hanging over me for the time being, for the days and months before reality pours in in the land on the other side. i fear. i worry. i don't want to be the outsider looking in. not when parts of my inside are lost.

loss leaves its marks in many forms. scars, memories, bodies. lives. marks of sadness. marks of violence. marks of loss.

the lost of you was like coal on fire tossed on raw skin. it burned. but i bore no visible scars. the lost of you left me facing myself, mirroring enola. the word bouncing off the wall. echoing.

perhaps i mourn with the hours of the night, listening to the sound of cars. and of silence. Three types of silences come through the bedroom window. The sound of silence after a passing-by car -- the sound of emptiness. the space misses the seconds it was filled. The sound of silence before a car comes -- the sound of anticipation, of waiting. and the silence between the "empty silence" and the "anticipating silence" -- the silence of resignation and settlement. A silence that accepts its solitude.