Today, I read, in the newspaper
about someone's daughter drowning
an accident,
an unforeseeable misfortune,
and I've come to the reality
that we can never know
the truth depths of what has happened to this family.

From this moment
their fleeting lives
will be droplets of water
that are trying to fill--
some void of where their
daughter used to swim.

And no matter
how calm the ocean becomes
it will always have the waves
that started from this day,
till the day; they too die.

It shakes me
and causes me to grieve for them
that I cannot share their pain
that as an outsider
I can only imagine the anguish.

I do not know these people
I have never met their daughter
and I will never meet them or her
but I can dream of their emotions--
it is a think haze of disbelief
"that something so terrible
would happen to me, my family."

And not only is their daughter dead
but they are empty--
They have now a room
full of belongings
that some how no longer belong
to anyone in the world.

Their suffering has only begun,
because the rush of death
leaves each person breathless,
and it is only when the air
decides to come  back to their lungs
and the ripples of the waves
have begun to subside
that their real world will set in.

And their bleakest truth will come to fruition,
as the family sits bedside
to an empty bed, where their daughter sleeps--
they will imagine the same as me
that maybe they're just dreaming--
when they wake up
she'll be back with them again.