Witnessing the grief of others is the only real grief I’ve ever felt. While there have been events that have had a semblance of being mine, they have always flowed alongside of me rather than through me. I feel the dampness on my skin an reach out, but it never touches me. The inertia of it is devastating.
During the desert monsoons, you can see the rain in the distance. Sometimes only a block away. The air is thick and the cool of it is a relief. A sheet of clouds and precipitation divides the sky down to its recipients. Lighting blazes illuminating the vast, dark landscape, like a millisecond of daylight.
When the rain falls on my shoulders I hardly feel it. It may as well be flowing from my skin to the heavens. The tears cried on my neck are never mine and are foreign visitors to my landscape. Always originating from a block away. I do my best to appease and almost always succeed. Kissed away the thought of the one she would always want more than me, if only for the moment. Rolling his huge frame off of the gravel while he was dowsed in the tears I still don’t understand. Allowing them the farce that it couldn’t have been helped. Only it isn’t a farce to them. Only to someone like me.
I see the storm but I can’t stop it. And worse, I feel nothing.
