Grave Matter

by Karina Halle

“Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others” DOSTOYEVSKY

I try to stay silent when I first meet people, trying to figure out how to wear my mask, what kind of person I need to be for the conversation.

See, boys are allowed to be mad scientists. But when women do it? We’re simply labeled crazy. And even at eight years old, I knew there was a difference.

Grief is funny like that. It lives alongside you, sometimes in silence, and then a random thought, or memory, or smell will punch through you like a fist, your bleeding heart in its grasp, and you have to relive it all over again. I often think of grief as a cycle from which there is no escape, an ouroboros, a snake of sorrow eating its tail.