it's funny how when the rain falls,
you can almost smell your fathers' old leather jacket
and burning wood
sometimes you can even feel the scratch of the old mexican blankets
rubbing on your skin.

nana

"we'll spread her ashes into the open sea and she'll become part of our universe. when the rain starts falling and a raindrop falls on your cheek, consider it a kiss from your grandmother", said the grandfather to his youngest grandchild. her rounded eyes matched his, wet and in disbelief. the first time you experience death, it knocks you completely off your feet and suspends you mid-air for a brief moment, you float, numb until gravity slams you down, taking the breath right out of your lungs. and then the pain. the pain that lingers and comes in waves of "i'm okay, yeah i'm alright" and "how will i ever get through this" and the "OH GOD WHY"s and you think that maybe the pain will never stop tearing you apart but it does. your body removes all of your broken and sad parts and replaces them with something much harder and difficult to penetrate so that nothing can ever hurt you like that again and here i sit, hardened from past heartbreaks next to the soft and innocent, newly shattered, girl who's grandmother is dying and she is seeing her world crash down around her little feet. death never gets easier to understand. you're always left with the questions of, "why them?" and "why now?" that no one is really able to answer but there is nothing as heart-wrenching as a fathers cry for his mother or the cry of a husband losing his wife. this day that you never thought would come has come and with it, it takes a life, as well as many shaky hands and wet faces. you cannot console the inconsolable.

unfinished thoughts.

by the time you've realized how deep the water is, you're already drowning. the sudden silence you hear as the world slows is deafening and there's nothing you can do but to cover your ears, close your eyes and pretend that everything is okay that the future is set and that life is fair but you know that it's not. the old man hobbling next to you can attest to that. how broken people become when they open their eyes to what the world really is. and you start to really miss the days when you had nothing to worry about besides, "mom, what's for dinner?" the days when you saw things as they should be, not how they really are. the days when the people you loved were heroes, not flawed humans. the days when everything seemed right. life can be such an amazing and terrible thing.