grief

I'm watching a whale rise from the water-- it's blue-black and round like a cartoon whale but big as life and alive. I want to touch its rubbery, resistant skin.

I'm standing in a kind of gigantic hall-- a confined space-- I think maybe I've fallen to the floor from higher up. the ceiling is midnight-, deep-space- blue, and when I look up, I see swarms of airships darting far above-- so many it's boggling. and I turn and ask the person beside me, "are they always up there, above us, and we just can't see them in the light of day, in the natural air? are there always so many?" and the person beside me says, "yes."

my dear friend has died. I've gone to the seaside town for the planned-celebration-turned-memorial-- and I can hardly bear it. I can't stand to be alone, but there are queues of people lined up to pay their respects-- I avoid all that and seek out our mutual friend who's keeping busy hosting a gathering. I'm having trouble finding her in the crowd and collapse in the shadows, overcome by grief-- she finds me by my sobbing. I cannot believe or bear it that our friend is gone. I don't know how to continue-- everything that was right before now seems entirely wrong and out of whack. how can all the world just go on as before, now that she's left it?