yesterday i cut through the woods behind the old house on my way to the river and it hurt

i found some lost beads in the woods near the owl prowl. i almost have enough for another witch's ladder

last night i dreamt about a friend who died when we were barely twenty. a friend of my parents died just this week. they were in their seventies, a few months shy of their fiftieth anniversary, having lived in the same house that whole time. a lot of folks from my circles died back then. we called them accidents but it was mostly drugs. death went quiet in those circles for twenty years before the cancers came

even in the shade, the breeze is hot today, but it's not slowing me down the way it sometimes does

why is acceptance the saddest stage of grief, less desperate than the shock of new loss, but the dull throb of it makes me stumble