Once in a while take a rest
from pursuing well-being
and practice your ill-being,
a time for holding your heart
in its sadness.

Then, when next grief springs up from the darkness,
you may be better equipped to bear the weight
and to use the now more familiar tools to shape,
to form your pain into something that includes a hand hold.

You will then have something that maybe slows the unfolding,
the unravelling that would come with uncontrolled mourning,
something that allows you to carry it with less stagger
as you walk through your trauma, and, while you're no less sadder,
you may have greater access to that part of your heart,
that side of your grey matter that allows more focus
on where, in time, to lay that burden down.