The Mirror of Grief

The aim is not to untangle the past,
to pull each thread and weave a new story,
not to mend the frayed edges of memory
with needles of reason or spools of time.
No, the past is not clay,
and we are not potters shaping its hardened form.

It is the weight we carry,
pressed into the soft earth of our becoming,
an indelible signature of what was.
We do not correct the rain for falling,
nor the storm for its fury.

Instead, therapy is the mirror held close,
its surface dark and reflective,
daring us to meet the gaze of our own ghosts,
to sit in the company of sorrow
and call each shadow by its name.

Here, grief blooms like a strange flower,
its petals heavy with the dew of acknowledgment.
We do not prune it; we let it grow,
wild and tangled in the garden of our truths,
until the roots touch what has been buried.

This is not the work of undoing,
but the slow art of reckoning—
to confront the echoes
and let them linger,
to touch the edges of pain
and know it as ours.

Only then, with the past unearthed but unaltered,
do we breathe in the ache,
let it fill our lungs like smoke
until it fades into air,
leaving us not lighter,
but freer.

-DJT