When his daughter died he made a church of his pain, the only truth he believed— the truth of his grief.
In that shrine, he could pray, must pray: “Lord, suffer me to know these wounds of which I am. Savor, ease this lonely creature.”
“Everything must die in the beauty of your grace. For in that loss I am found and loved. In the baptism of cries and tears, I am reborn”.
“No water is brighter than splashing new rain. Nothing blooms purer than the first snow. The most beauteous song is the heart’s sorrow.”
“I grieve the fist grief that comes at the road’s bend. I stumble and cling to it like a bad, bad friend. I grieve the second small grief caught in the breast, the ones that bites the heart and knows no rest. I know the greatest grief will never be denied and will come otherwise, blinding my crying eyes. I know these griefs of feet and heart and head will only leave me when alas I am finally dead.”
He didn’t like the rhyme of that final prayer, but he knew his daughter would love it, so only for her delight did he sacrifice and leave it for her to sing and dance to.
He repeated and repeated, each prayer, until a whole rosary full was prayed and his daughter looked back at him.
He offered her the last of his dinner, but remembered ghosts never ate. He made a place for her at his bed’s foot, took out the book they never finished reading. He and she knew each syllable and vowel. The past echoes wrapped around their bodies.
All his grief and hers, all the grief that ever existed, was shared between two small wild eyes and two big ones filled with the sufferance of clouds.
Yet, midnight always came and each night he tried to save the beauty of what remained of her— barely two palmfuls in his prayers.
In the departing cry his grief scattered in the trees, rose and flew up into the night breeze, mixed with the light of lampposts and the coming morning rain.
When he awoke the yard was like a churchyard and large snowdrops where on the grass, the kind that catch easily on a child’s tongue,
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