Grief

[Here is the piece I wrote for the CotW #67 before I realized that I had to pay to enter the challenge. Didn't feel like letting it go to waste so I just posted it to my main area.]

Grief is a thick mire that pulls and sucks us down. Extrication is made near impossible by the unrelenting force that pulls, not at the body, but at the heart. For some Grief is nothing more than a puddle that pulls down upon one's sole, the only remembrance a slurp as our foot is removed. For many, Grief is without end, a bog of immeasurable depth that threatens to swallow them up. As they panic and thrash about they become covered in grief's muck and refuse till they are unrecognizable. Regardless of Grief's depth or length, it begins the same; with a tearing of the heart. Sometimes it is as small as tearing a corner of a piece of paper. Perhaps annoying and painful, but it is a small piece of the larger nature of things. And sometimes it is the wrenching of the tree itself from the very earth. Grief rips and tears at us, biting into the soft flesh beneath bark, rending our happiness away till what is left falls beneath its own weight. That tumultuous resignation and a pained outcry become our final acts.

Beyond every grief, no matter the size, there is a light. It may be obscured by the copse of vegetation that accompanies grief, anger, sorrow, distress, or maybe it lies around a corner, but it is always there. Some do not see it, for it lies beyond many many painful miles of thorns and bogs and so they let themselves be swallowed by Grief. They close their eyes and sink beneath a black miasma.