Loss, Again by Samuel A. Adeyemi

Before my uncle died, he was silent for over a decade.
The stroke took his tongue, left only splinters of language.
But he was never alone. Someone was always there to listen
to the little words: the broken Yoruba he could spit. But when
my aunt—his wife—died, something left his body. Something
greater than language. It has been a rough year for the family.
I remember the hospital visits to my aunt, her grandchildren
playing on the tiles. The doctors said she would recover, that
the operation would work. Her brother, a prophet, said she
would find healing, too. And the whole family trusted, held
on to a miracle that would ruin them. The doctors have killed
my sister, my mother said. They cut her open, like an animal,
and let the life escape. The old man could not bear it. They did
not even let him come with us to her funeral. Grief left him
wounded and hollow, the way light leaves a body and makes
it just a body. Bones and blood, empty of love. And death
returned for my uncle’s body, did not forget to leave the other side
of the blade unused. I was away from the family when I heard
the news. Now, when I return to the house, I will live in the echo
of their absence. My cousins stripped of pillars. The walls of
their lives breaking with loneliness. So quickly, we are left with
nothing. I am trying to strengthen my heart from the transience
of the world. The volatility of death that cannot be trapped by
desire. I am learning misery may not wait for healing to end
before it returns; that at the end of loss, loss may begin again.