Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

by Max Porter

For a souvenir, for a warning, for a lick of night in the morning. For a little break in the mourning. I will give you something to think about, I whispered. He woke up and didn’t see me against the blackness of his trauma.

‘She would call me sentimental.’ ‘You are sentimental.’

‘She’ll be way back, before you. She’ll be in the golden days of her childhood. Ghosts do not haunt, they regress. Just as when you need to go to sleep you think of trees or lawns, you are taking instant symbolic refuge in a ready-made iconography of early safety and satisfaction. That exact place is where ghosts go.’

Once upon a time there were two boys who purposefully misremembered things about their father. It made them feel better if ever they forgot things about their mother.

Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project. I refuse to rush. The pain that is thrust upon us let no man slow or speed or fix.

MAN I agree. It changes all the time. BIRD Grief? MAN Yes. BIRD It is everything. It is the fabric of selfhood, and beautifully chaotic.

Caught baffled by the perplexing slow-release of sadness for ever and ever and ever.

A howling sorry which is yes which is thank you which is onwards.