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How do you measure grief? 

Is it in the hours you lie awake, staring at ceilings that never answer back?

Or in the way your shadow seems heavier than your body?

Do you weigh it in footsteps

the ones you take alone,

the ones you don’t take at all?

Do you measure it in letters you never send,

words caught between your throat and silence?

How do you measure grief?

Is it in the cracks of a clock face,

where time drips slow and uneven?

Or in the trembling of hands

that forget what stillness feels like?

Do you trace it in rings of a tree

each one marking another year

you carry absence as if it were bark?

Do you measure it in mirrors,

by the way your eyes look older than yesterday?

How do you measure grief?

Is it in the distance between your heartbeat and your breath?

Or the spaces at the dinner table where no one sits?

Do you count the unopened doors in your mind,

the ones that groan when memory knocks?

Do you measure it in music,

where every note is either too sharp with longing

or too flat with sorrow?

How do you measure grief?

Is it by how many mornings you rise with the weight still on your chest,

or how many nights you fall asleep holding its ghost?

Do you count it in the cracks of your voice,

or in the silence that swallows the sound whole?

Do you measure it in the way the world keeps moving

while you are still learning how to stand?

How do you measure grief?

Is it by the love that carves hollows in you,

or by the ache that reminds you it was real?