Poets and philosophers have waxed poetic about it since the first icy thread rent the first broken heart. They fill tomes and tombs with tales tall and true. Yet, I’ve spent more than a year trying to conjure some eloquent expression and not a one finds the grace to relent. No, they twist and trip down my tangled tongue then to stick to the tip, frozen, unmoving, unyielding, unsaid. There comes no song; no lay of lament. No sonnet to silence a cacophonous confusion. Only the aftermath, the end; the beginning of some perverted version of what ought to have been. All that is left in the din and the darkness is a single ray, as clear and cruel as the night is dirty and dank. Ruthlessly, it rings with what I’ve always known: The words do not come because, in truth, there are none.

It’s not elegant.
It’s not poetic.
It’s raw.
It’s ragged.
It’s real.

It’s painful and it’s plain:

My sister is dead.