in my eyes, becomes the night.
My soul feels connected to the night time much stronger than before, before I was plunged into this bizarre alternate reality, surrounded with grief.
Night time is full of shadow – not cast by the sun, but by the moon or the man-made lights making up the landscape around me.
I feel less pressure at night. The shadows – they feel more real, more true. During the day in the bright sun, there’s nowhere to find relief. I usually end up pulling out a mask – not the face masks that people are wearing now in this pandemic time, but the mask of small talk and pleasantries and the mask of being “okay, all things considering”.
During the day I have to exist in a world that doesn’t make space for grief, all while carrying around grief so massive that it is never not on my mind. It may not always be at the absolute forefront, but its weight is always there.
At night there’s no need to reassure anyone, to pretend or put on a mask. I can just be me, with my grief. The moon and her shadows are more gentle. She doesn’t want anything from me, she just sits with me, witness to my love and my heartache and the sorrow that has burrowed to the deepest, truest parts of my being.