The Observer’s Guide to Grief: Again

Grief doesn’t give a fuck
What day it is
How long it’s been
Whether it’s convenient
To barge back into your mind today
It doesn’t care if you dealt with it
Yesterday,
Last month
Or fifteen years ago
It can be a leaky dripping tap
Or a ruptured pipe emergency
It can hide on the edge of the mirror
Or be a floater in your eye
Its shit-eating grin bursting into the scene
When you least or you most expect it
Its cruel contempt
And tenacious disdain
Its following guilt
And the subsequent shame
It’s a villain that can’t be defeated
It’s a dragon that cannot be slain -

OR-

It’s a old friend you meet for a coffee
To reminisce with once again
To laugh and to cry with
And ask how you’ve been
To embrace
And embrace
And embrace
And again.