"Grief is not a disorder, a disease or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve." - Earl Grollman

It’s perhaps 11:00 in the morning
In Silicon Valley, where the work shift
Began hours ago. The weather is mostly sunny
With 63% humidity and 0% precipitation,
Yet sorrowful snowflakes have already drifted
Unnoticed over the melancholy hill.

It's the kind of day when you don’t work at all
But enjoy the all-forgiving sunshine
Sitting on your porch.

Meanwhile, it's 3:00 AM in Japan.
Japanese working men returned from the office hours ago,
Had their rice and miso soup, and played with their kids.
They've green-ticked all the points
On their invisible to-do lists, performed
All the rituals they call life.

Now, they are in their deep slumber.
Sometimes, I wonder what they see in their nightmares.
Being late for the metro, which could surrealistically
Snowball into a nationwide stock market crash?
Did any average Japanese ever arrive late somewhere
After the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings?

And here I am, nearing midnight,
Doing nothing in particular for years or maybe decades,
Gazing at an AI-generated picture
Of a mermaid with three breasts.

What have we done to ourselves?
Where does it all lead?

Going to bed at a reasonable hour seems pointless.
I haven't felt the welcoming arctic coolness of my bed
Or the enchanting, calming darkness of a night
Filled with fireflies for decades.

Checking off to-do lists or embracing life's absurdities
Seems futile. Only little deaths make sense.
Proving our humanity in front of a desktop
Makes sense.

Sometimes, it feels as though
I have witnessed this world in its most
Scandalously naked form, seeing through
Its deceitful promises and the tender sunrises
That hint at fresh beginnings, invisibly woven within it,
Only to find a void of nothingness.

I should not have seen that bare-chested reality.
Now I can’t be happy.

It’s like catching the city crime lord
Committing a murder, and then your life
Is at stake forever. There is no unlearning
This reality. Once you know it,
It goes with you to the grave.

Then you are born again, seeing the bare-chested lady
For the first time. And this cycle goes on
Until you live all human lives, in past, present, and future.
Until there is nothing left except to be
The god of the lonely world you constructed.

Maybe the thing we call happiness comes
From being forgetful… Forgetful of the grief
That never truly fades away, but can be forgotten
For months or even years.

That way, one can be happy,
Or at least closer to it. But for people like me,
Who just love to intellectualize life and rainbow or sunshine,
That ‘forgetting’ feels like a sin, an adultery with self.

Even when we don’t think of it,
In the back of our mind, we are aware
That someone, somewhere— five years ago
Or perhaps a century past— penned it in a poem
Or etched it into a one-act play.

Our sorrow is as profound as Ophelia’s.
Our grief is no simpler than the grief of Orpheus.

In a way, it never truly leaves us as it should.
It remains truly ours.

Like a bullet wound on a soldier's body,
Like an indelible badge of honor
Of an eternal war.

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