you don't know grief until it holds you by the ankle, long and cold bony fingers wrapped around the freckled skin of your long-bruised limbs. you don't know it until it drags you under, your flesh tearing against the jagged walls of the ground you're sinking in. it would be too kind to call grief a dark blue pool, too kind for it to simply be an all-encompassing coldness burying itself into every pore of both your skin and your bones. grief burns hot, an all-consuming blue flame, it melts plastic fibers against your skin, then your skin against your bones, then your bones against the tiled floor of a long-gone house. it's the kind of ache you can never put at the back of your mind, not the kind you can busy yourself to ignore, it burns too well, a dull blade cutting into your arteries, you feel every second and never grow around it, never knowing how to really deal with it. it's an eternal sort, something you just live with forever.
