My wife and son died in a car crash.
I buried what was left of them
in the same grave.
“Let them stay together,”
I whispered,
“in death and in heaven.”
After the funeral,
loneliness settled over me
like cold rain at dusk.
My tears came like the monsoon—
with thunder,
wind,
and fury.
That night
I cried myself into a troubled sleep,
where nightmares wore their faces
and would not let me go.
Morning found me
wrung out
like a rain-soaked cloth,
my heart caught
in the iron jaws of a vice.
The house had forgotten their voices.
Their chairs waited in silence.
Their cups still stood upon the table,
holding nothing
but absence.
Fate had spared me
and taken them.
I stood beneath a sky
that no longer knew my name.
Life did not ask
whether I wished to continue.
It simply placed another dawn
at my door.
So I rose,
carrying grief
like a stone beneath my ribs,
and walked into a world
that would never again
be whole.
