Wintering

Suicide is the storm that knocked out our power,
plunged us into darkness,
blue-penciled our future.
An impossible interruption
delivered by an unwelcome uniform.

Friends and family arrive,
and their light accentuates the devastation.
Words fall like rain,
streaming into the gutter and gushing down the storm drain,
too loud to make sense of.
Lightning flashes anger.
Questions snuff out candles of hope.

Well past blankets and hot cocoa,
we sit together in the stinging cold,
silently alarmed at the landscape of this life,
daring still to breathe
for who knows how long.

Some day we will pick up words like fallen branches,
carefully
shaving away the splinters
wondering what we might use to build
something.
But not today.

Today’s work is
to feel the black ache,
the powerlessness
the unrelenting fear
the seeming insignificance of love against such tumult
and to gather ourselves
gently
present anyway.