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Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

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Max Porter

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“Tears of grief are unique. They contain chemicals that aren't found in the more mundane droplets of moisture that bathe the eyes, as if our tears wash us free of some noxious cause of sorrow. And tonight, after crying until I am empty, I have a rare glimpse of my own interior landscape - wounds piled like tiny skeletons into the reef of conscious adult life. I am aground amid my conquered traumas, stranded as a consequence of my achievements.”

“...we were different boys, we were brave new boys without a Mum. So when he told us what happened I don't know what my brother was thinking but I was thinking this: Where are the fire engines? Where is the noise and clamour of an event like this? Where are the strangers going out of their way to help, screaming, flinging bits of emergency glow-in-the-dark equipment at us to try and settle us and save us? There should be men in helmets speaking a new and dramatic language of crisis. There should be horrible levels of noise, completely foreign and inappropriate for our cosy London flat.”

“She has never been a pretty crier. She sobbed the way she did everything else - with passion and excess. That she had managed to keep it inside her this long was astounding to James. He thought of pushing open the half-closed door and kneeling before his wife, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and helping her upstairs. He raised his hand, stroking the wood of the door, planning to say something to calm her. But what wisdom could he offer Gus, when he could not even heed it himself? James walked upstairs again, got into bed, covered his head with a pillow. And hours later, when Gus crept beneath the sheets, he tried to pretend that he did not feel the weight of her grief, lying between them like a fitful child, so solid that he could not reach past it to touch her.”