i experience him gone
but then
i experience him here
grief makes me know
it is like the physicist says
& grief makes me experience it
how time could all be equally real
& no illusions
as past and future never collapse
instead, it is that grief can make my present grow
the mystics make it sound so odd
but everyone who has lost someone
who has ever held a ghost
everyone who has ever loved and notices how wrong it is to say
to say “loved” in the past tense // knows
they know
how grief makes the present grow
engulfing our entire lived experience
and pulling in the future too
the future we already know
we know will have the same
the same cavity where they should be
we experience it
in the growing of our grief
and so we grieve it all at once
from the last look on their face
to the death of the universe
nathanael.ink 