When we lose someone, we don’t just lose them Here, today.
We lose every future day

People will say to focus on the memories,
the good times,
to hold them close and glowing, always,
in the crumbling chambers of your heart

they’ll say there will always be happiness there,
back then, where we’re still with them.
And there’s a gratitude that comes with that

But that is not why we grieve.
Memories are not what we lose when something ends
—no, that comes much later.
What we lose is the ability to form new memories.
The chance to refresh what will, now,
inevitably fade
No matter how reluctantly we hold on
No matter how deep we root our fingers
into wisps of images that will now
only degrade
in our desperate grip,
changing and corroding, ever so slightly,
each time we replay them in our minds.
Until they only resemble what it is we have lost,
what we yearn to relive, and remember.
Until their glow dims to a heavy echo
in those chambers of our heart

that is why we grieve.