the greatestloss in life

by Jessica Hicks

Death is not the greatest loss in life, Not the shortage of breath, Not the stab of a knife, Well, not the death of yourself, in the least,

Loss is but that small, stinging feeling, Which over time, is slowly healing, The unbearable pain will last forever, The first hearing of it, denial and terror,

Your insides will forever be burning and aching, For from the death of a loved one, There is no escaping.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Maia Lui-Schwille

Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. My grandfather who I recently lost, Was golden to us but at a cost. He was the first flower in every summer, The one and only golden wonder. But flower subsided to leaf, So I sank to grief

Now he lays in silence, His gravestone, to us it’s simply priceless. As dawn passes down to day, proof in stillness nothing gold can stay.

“We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.”

Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking