Perhaps it is like lifting weights,
the way we learn to carry grief.
At first we cannot lift it at all,
crushed as we are beneath it.
But then, because to live
we must move, we move
just the smallest measure.
With our lungs, it so happens.
And breath by breath, we lift grief
the tiniest increment.
That’s how it begins.
Oh the muscle of stubbornness.
How life longs to live through us,
even when we would rather give up.
How strange that the only way
to rebuild our strength
is first by breaking down.
The ache is great. Everything tires.
But eventually, the body repairs
what is damaged, relearns
how to carry what at first seemed impossible,
until we are familiar with the weight,
conversing with the weight, even smiling,
even laughing, even playing with the weight.
It’s like the way a mother’s arms
strengthen the longer she carries
her child. It’s like the way I once
could barely lift the barbell,
and then it was not that the weight
became lighter, but that I developed
until I could work with it better.
Does the weight ever lessen?
I don’t know. But I do know it’s easier now
to carry it. And sometimes
I need to change the way I hold it
in order to go on moving.
And sometimes I am simply
so humbled by grief I must
put the weight down and all I can do
is breathe.
And so I do. So I do.