The Language of Grief

there’s a grief i don’t know how to name 

it lives deep in my chest, embedded in my lungs, so deep somewhere that should only be me and i ask myself: is this loss me?

it’s a grief that lives in every part of me and sometimes its roots make it hard to breathe

they say understanding comes with time and experience and i hope i hope i hope it does because i want nothing more than to understand and i tell myself when it squeezes my heart that one day one day one day it’ll make sense and it’s the only way i’ve ever managed to quiet it and yet i wonder sometimes why that’s what it takes when i’m not even sure it’s a grief i want to know

it is a grief that feels hot and cold and relieving and stressful and it sounds like home as much as it sounds foreign

and i treat it as foreign

i treat it as something other, something to learn, something new to me; i have to or it slips from my grasp like so much steam

but why must i?

why must i treat it as foreign, why should it feel strange at all

this, which should have been mine to claim, mine to know, mine to understand, mine to keep, mine from the start

the history written in my bones like a brand has been there from the very first, so why does it have to be other, why can’t i claim it like i should have been able to

even as i write this i grieve

because that’s just it isn’t it?

i write. i write and i write and i write and i try and i try and no matter how far i get no matter well it goes no matter how hard i try

until my fingers hurt and my eyes burn and my head spins; at the end of the day it was never the first

there’s a history that leans its weight on my grief

and i want so badly to reach it, to touch it, to grasp the smallest fragment of the history just out of reach but that grief is always in my way

there’s no way around it

what was the cost of choosing to live, to thrive? what was lost when another chose to let go to grasp at a future?

why does it feel like a part of me was long lost to me before i ever began?

does it grieve them, i wonder, like it grieves me; a library of knowledge that might’ve been there in another time, another life

do they look at us who have a library so fundamentally different and grieve the words that seem to be missing

why was the soul of me shattered and parts of it lost so many years before i was even an idea

how could those that never knew me strike so sharply at the core of me long before it existed

years before we came to be, people who never knew us, people we never knew, people we would only ever hear stories of, they looked around themselves and let go to reach for a future that could one day be us

years after i came to be, i stand amongst the fragments of what they let go of and i grieve

i walk forward.

i look back. farther than i’ve ever been. i reach.

will i have to let go one day? will i be allowed to hold on to a little of what they couldn’t pass on to us? or will i too have to turn away for something worthwhile to more than my soul?

was it ever really mine or do i just wish it was?

“at the end of the day it was never first”

well, maybe not

maybe the story goes something more like this:

i write and i write and i write and i try and i try and i hold on so tight to so much steam

and no matter how far i get and no matter how much easier it comes and no matter how much i learn

until my fingers hurt and my eyes burn and my head spins; at the end of the day it will never be mine the way it was once, not so many years ago

because there was a time it was the first

there was a time when this language that today flows out of me so easily, that is mine and yet not, was foreign to me

more foreign, even, than the language that was my first is to me now

and how is that fair?

there was never a time when my first language was completely foreign to me, not really

it was my first language, my only language once

it was cantonese that my parents spoke to me when i was born, english that i had to learn to go to preschool

it is english that i write pages and pages and pages in, cantonese that i struggle to learn and hold in my grasp despite it all

and how is that fair?

maybe you wonder, sometimes i do too, “if it matters so much, how could you lose it so easily?”

every time i think, every time i have to answer to myself

what did it matter to a seven year old who wanted nothing more than to play games, to have fun, to make friends; whose teachers and schoolmates all spoke english

do i resent my parents for having learned another language, for being able to understand me, to respond to me?

how could that be fair?

do i resent that child for not knowing what was being lost?

how could that be fair?

what do i do when grief comes to me again like the crashing of a wave

when it presses its weight on my lungs to remind me what isn’t there and i can’t i can’t i can’t escape it

what do i do when despair comes again to greet me like a familiar friend

when it all looks like scribbles and it feels like i haven’t gotten anywhere, like i never will

what do i do when shame threatens to strangle me again like a noose before the fall

when the sounds that ring in my ears feel heavy on my tongue

what is there left to do but close my eyes and hold on to as much steam as i can catch

to turn the volume up loud enough to drown out the grief

until it rushes in so unceasingly it almost feels like complete understanding

until it can flood in and wash out all but the deepest roots

later, the grief will grow in my heart again

later, the despair will find me again

later, the shame will catch me again

maybe one day i will let it all slip out of my grasp

but steam or not, today i will hold on

later, i will answer to myself again

for now, i close my eyes, i breathe

in this moment it is mine again, one way or another