When the worst has come true, then what do you say,
when all of your life is just blown away?
What do you say when they tell you the news,
when your blood just runs and drains down to your shoes?
What do you say with tears in your eyes,
with a lump in your throat and your fist in the skies?
Where do you go when there's no going left,
When you've gone to them all and they've all left you bereft?
How do you keep going when you don't care to live,
When all that you lived for is not there to give?

You say what you say and you say it out loud,
you ask every question and search every cloud.
You damn all the answers they name on the list,
you pray the impossible somehow exists.
Then you stop writing questions; you write periods instead;
periods... to somehow set it straight in your head.
But it won't come out straight, so you draw your own lines,
you define your own space, and make your own time.
Then somewhere in facing the facts and the truth,
the grip of your grief begins to let loose.

Life slowly becomes a bearable existence
Months pass in to years and there grows a vague distance.
The pain is still near, but not like before;
then you turn back one day and you look at that door.
Down a dark tangled trail where one day you trod;
you are shocked to see flowers pushing up through the sod.
They are flowers you never could see there before,
you turn ‘round again and then there are more.
The seeds of your sorrows sprouting up from your tears,
they've been growing behind you through all of those years.

Pick them now and enjoy them, share their fragrance so sweet,
they are the gifts of your grieving as they grow at your feet.
They grew through the darkness and stretched toward the light,
they bloom in bright promise that day follows night.
They were planted in pain and grew up in sorrow,
they are yesterday's gifts" to a brighter tomorrow.

-Bruce Conley