Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

by Max Porter

We guessed and understood that this was a new life and Dad was a different type of Dad now and we were different boys, we were brave new boys without a Mum.

We can do things other characters can’t, like eat sorrow, un-birth secrets and have theatrical battles with language and God.

Many people said ‘You need time’, when what we needed was washing powder, nit shampoo, football stickers, batteries, bows, arrows, bows, arrows.

I remember being scared that something must, surely, go wrong, if we were this happy, her and me, in the early days, when our love was settling into the shape of our lives like cake mixture reaching the corners of the tin as it swells and bakes.

Loss and pain in the world is unimaginable but I want them to try.

and their voice was the life and song of their mother. Unfinished. Beautiful. Everything.