These thoughts of acute grief inevitably give way to the broad and impersonal grief that is existing with any intentionality/awareness in this world of death machines. Every manifestation of genocide, every act of police brutality, every eviction, every encampment sweep, every person denied medical care, every hour of life sacrificed to work builds the grief in my blood towards toxicity. I open my mouth to scream but no sound comes out. I try to go through the motions of my day, but my brain is molten and leaking from my nose. I try to swallow the grief until it all but chokes me, threatens to burn me up from the inside out. I am afraid. I thrash against the waves until I am exhausted and I begin to drown.

But despite the fear and exhaustion, there is something powerful to be found beneath the waves, as your mouth fills with sand and the water rushes into your lungs. Through the pain and despair there is a clarity that insurmountable grief opens up. Grief is not merely something that happens to us that we must swallow. It offers a framework, a logic against logic that seems to cut the world in two; what matters from what doesn’t, what we desire from what is forced upon us. Grief does not need to be a burden, or at least not only a burden, for us to bear.

Grief can be a weapon for us to wield.