The Grace of "Grief"

Grief by Liz Johnston

Coal-black, water-well cavernous grief.

Dark, cold to the bone, limitless, never-ending.

Grief of grainy gristly separation, never to be reunited.
Never to gently touch or sweetly smell in the same way grief.
Shackled by the encompassing handcuffs of unrelenting grief.
Abruptly locked away in deafening solitary confinement.
Basic hopeful rights of pumpkin orange touch, yellow laughter, and ruby-rich enduring love.
A steel-blue life sentence of hard-edged grief.
The grumbly man in the moon but a sliver.
A sliver of white, crystalline hope,
Of quiet regenerating renewal.