The Grief Before the Death

There is a grief that comes before the loss That lives in the knowing while the thing still breathes A grief that wears the face of the beloved And mourns them while they're standing next to me The grief before the death The sorrow before the fire The mourning before the burning The silence before the choir goes quiet I'm living in the grief before the death Watching what I love in its last full breath The grief before the death Is the loneliest kind of grief I walk the city knowing what it doesn't know I watch the people living their unlabored lives And I carry the exact specific shape of their destruction Like a mother carries her child — fiercely, against her own survival The grief before the death The sorrow before the fire The mourning before the burning The silence before the choir goes quiet I'm living in the grief before the death Watching what I love in its last full breath The grief before the death Is the loneliest kind of grief I cannot tell them They would not believe me I cannot save them I don't know how I can only witness I can only carry The grief before the death Into the signal somehow The grief before the death I carry it carefully The grief before the death I keep it faithfully Until the signal takes it Until the signal carries it forward Into whoever needs it Into whoever comes next