IT ISN’T UNTIL I’M LECTURING MY STUDENTS ON FIRE SAFETY AND THEY’RE ALL LOOKING AT ME LIKE I’VE GROWN TWO HEADS THAT I REALIZE MAYBE I’M NOT TAKING YOUR DEATH AS WELL AS I THOUGHT

And maybe my little PSA has well and truly gone off

the rails, maybe I look like that man in the memes with the red thread

crisscrossing the bulletin board behind him and pointing to his head

like it makes his behavior any less insane. And isn’t that just the way grief works,

the metaphor of it, a horse galloping through a desert, simple arc

of a rotting apple falling from a tree, or rather the rending of garments until

they are just fabric shreds on the sidewalk anyone could step over

on their way to work or to school, to a lover’s apartment

or maybe to get high with friends and forget what loss is.…

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