Grief

Grief is a planet or an island, inhabitable, inescapable. But you inhabit it and you escape it, and when you do, grief sometimes turns tsunami, overwhelming out of a flat, placid sea, like tonight in the more than 80 degree heat after ten o'clock, walking the dog in front of the MSM residences on Claremont, smoking kids out front and just a few yards past them, the hit, doubling over and eyes shut tight at the disbelief that Annie is no longer here, gone now more than a year.