Gratitude: November 1, 2025

My Love You Died in My Dream Last Night

I did not know it was possible (your constancy

being among your chief characteristics)

and I, bereft, could not think of how to tell our child

and so kindly you got up and together we admired

the suit in which you chose to be buried

and your ongoing good humor.

I thought it would not last long, your ability

to continue talking with a body going soft

and tried to limit my conversation so as to have you

a few more hours, but also was buzzing with questions

of what I was now to do without you, questions

I could ask no one else—what do they know—

and when at last you admitted your need

to lay yourself  back down in the coffin

I cut a square of  light from my throat

and when you closed your eyes I buried it with you.

Heather Christie

❤️

Grief

Grief—as I knew it, died many times. It

died trying to reunite with other lesser

deaths. Each morning I lay out my

children’s clothing to cover their grief.

The grief remains but is changed by

what it is covered with. A picture of

oblivion is not the same as oblivion.

My grief is not the same as my pain. My

mother was a mathematician so I tried

to calculate my grief. My father was an

engineer so I tried to build a box around

my grief, along with a small wooden

bed that grief could lie down on. The

texts kept interrupting my grief, forcing

me to speak about nothing. If you cut

out a rectangle of a perfectly blue sky,

no clouds, no wind, no birds, frame it

with a blue frame, place it faceup on

the floor of an empty museum with an

open atrium to the sky, that is grief.

Victoria Chang