Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

by Max Porter

Afterwards he was quieter. He was, for two or three years, by all accounts, very odd. He had the perpetual look and demeanour of someone floating, turning in the beer- gold light of evening and being surprised by the enduring warmth. A rolled-over shoulder half-squint half-smile. Caught baffled by the perplexing slow-release of sadness for ever and ever and ever. Which I suppose, looking back, was because of us. He couldn’t rage. He couldn’t want to die. He couldn’t rail against an absence when it was grinning, singing, freckling in the English summer tweedle dee tweedle dum in front of him. Perhaps if Crow taught him anything it was a constant balancing. For want of a less dirty word: faith.