mourning

Death abides by no one's rules...it takes what pleases it without consciousness to its decisions. It destroys what it will. It took the pieces of perfection I once knew and shattered them. Now what remains are shards of a dream, drawing blood with every step.

The more death, the more birth. People are entering, others are exiting. The cry of a baby, the mourning of others. When others cry, the other are laughing and making merry. The world is mingled with sadness, joy, happiness, anger, wealth, poverty, etc.

At the end of the day your ability to connect with your readers comes down to how you make them feel.

Axsem would say nothing more to any of them. No sooner had Fallon released him than he fled deep into the trees, staff in hand, with Hailos following after. Through the morning air, they heard the wail of his mourning. The scarred heart of the general was torn wide open by having to recall even one abbreviated story from his past. He needed time to coddle his mangled heart and push away the torturous memories.

For some reason, I thought Victor could heal that wound better than anyone else. It's strange to think that this vampire, the embodiment of all my hatred, could act like a suture.

Who breathes must suffer, and who thinks must mourn; And he alone is bless'd who ne'er was born.

I felt as though the vessel if my suffering had become empty, as if nothing could interest me now. I had lost even the ability to suffer.

[Sylvia Plath] was now far along a peculiarly solitary road on which not many would risk following her. So it was important for her to know that her messages were coming back clear and strong. Yet not even her determinedly bright self-reliance could disguise the loneliness that came from her almost palpably, like a heat haze. She asked for neither sympathy nor help but, like bereaved widow at a wake, she simply wanted company in her mourning.

They bewailed innocence maltreated, goodness persecuted, love bleeding, meekness about to die; but my heart has a deeper and more bitter cause to mourn. My sins were the scourges which lacerated those blessed shoulders, and crowned with thorn those bleeding brows: my sins cried __rucify Him! Crucify Him!_ and laid the cross upon His gracious shoulders. His being led forth to die is sorrow enough for one eternity: but my having been His murderer, is more, infinitely more, grief than one poor fountain of tears can express.

I have remembered Who wept for a parting between the living and the dead.

Sometimes we are written down in books. Or, someone tells a story in which our name figures. And so we live on, through someone else__ voice_These are the indelible marks others make of us, like the watermarks of high tides, names carved into barks, or stamps branded onto belongings. For what else is history but the collected voices of others, who sing a chorus of what once was. It is not words but voices that are the inscriptions seared onto pages, into minds, of the fragments others glean, as we live our lives in passing.Flitting and fl eeting, we rub off as we move through, and in our wake is cast the dust of the stars that we become. And sometimes it is caught on the fingers of others, and they press that gold to their lips, where it glistens, an eternal testimony to the fact that they adored us: So we, those of us whoremember, we grow more golden as we age, as if cast into statues that commemorate the splendor of those who loved us, and those we were privilegedto love.

Memory is all I have now

Afghan GirlIce blue eyes that look to the morning sky as I knit the pieces and remnants of my life. I have No books, no paper, no pencils, and no black boards. I look at the holes in my life as I see the hills of the Appalachians that echo. I think to myself, who will I marry? Is my life-like Pari? These strings please come together. Snowflakes give me hope, and my dreams dance all around me. I__l put another log on the fire. I watch the brown paper bag over the broken glass pane letting the cold wind in; I__l take some of these remnants and stuff it.These strings are come together. Mama told me that life would be hard. I bartered for flour the other day, and the chickens ain__ laying no eggs. I struggle with life and these strings. My hands are worn and tired. Now, I have granny square hands. I am unclean, unblemished, and finished, Afghan girl.

Live life so well that, even if you die, the empty seats behind you will tell the story that, "yea, this soul did what God sent him/her to do". Give life and hope into your family, village, community, country, continent and the world at large. You can do it!

Now there is one thing I can tell you: you will enjoy certain pleasures you would not fathom now. When you still had your mother you often thought of the days when you would have her no longer. Now you will often think of days past when you had her. When you are used to this horrible thing that they will forever be cast into the past, then you will gently feel her revive, returning to take her place, her entire place, beside you. At the present time, this is not yet possible. Let yourself be inert, wait till the incomprehensible power ... that has broken you restores you a little, I say a little, for henceforth you will always keep something broken about you. Tell yourself this, too, for it is a kind of pleasure to know that you will never love less, that you will never be consoled, that you will constantly remember more and more.

Stop the pity party! Your sorrow is full and complete when you go through unfortunate circumstances and decide to mourn for life as a result of the unexpected.

...And yet a knowledgeis here that tenses the throatas for song: the inheritanceof the ones, alive or oncealive, who stand behindthe ones I have imagined,who took into their mindsthe troubles of this place,blights of love and race,but saw a good fate hereand willingly paid its cost,kept it the best they could,thought of its good,and mourned the good they lost.(From the ending of Where in Clearing, p179)

Acknowledge that some moments are just plain awful__esperate and gloomy and painful and miserable and nothing at all but anguish. No truthful, cheerful thought in the world will fix it. So let me cry awhile. Don't try to find a sunbeam where a shroud of darkness encloses me. Let me mourn. Then, after the storm, when the tears have run dry and my eyes choose to open, I will look for your rainbow of hope.