"How can a body withstand this?"

To love life, to love it even when you have no
stomach for it, and everything you've held
dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat,
thickening the air, heavy as water,
more fit for gills than lungs;
When grief weights you like your own flesh,
only more of it, an obesity of grief,

You think, 'How can a body withstand this?'

Then you hold life like a face, between your palms,
a plain face, no charming smile, or violet eyes,
and you say, 'Yes, I will take you, I will love you again.'

- Ellen Bass♥