SIAN M. JONES

The Well-Worn Channels of Grief

The arroyos are full again
and the soft sand sides
throw handful after handful
of themselves into the mix,
the scour, the spray.
This grief makes speed,
makes distance
from our dry, sun-baked
established order.

This sudden yet
entirely expected storm,
grief is both mundane
and spectacular,
a desert rain that
cores you out.

You know that somewhere
some invertebrate species
and the commensurate flora
sparkle and scintillate,
swell and thrive
in this moment of
what feels to them like freedom.

And maybe to them it is.
But not to us,
the stay-behinds,
the static shore.
We hold still and corrode.

I can hear you say:
You’re supposed to be
making this
better for me.
Is there a better?
On the one hand,
to disintegrate here is,
we hope, to integrate
elsewhere downstream.
And on the other,
the grief is a bounty
gathered up from all
the luscious
bodies of water
(happiness)
on the way here.

And both of these are true,
all of it is,
but that doesn’t mean
that grief, that love,
doesn’t leave you
a natural disaster,
damaged,
but expect you still
to just call it
seasonal. 

Sian M. Jones received an MFA in fiction from Mills College. Her work has appeared in 3rd Wednesday and Lammergeier Magazine, among other publications. In her day job, she writes as clearly as she can about complex code. She occasionally updates jonessian.com.