who am i to grieve? as i embark on this, i can refer to no insufferable tragedy, no deep loss to situate a personal relationship with this sensation. so have i grieved before? is it something that you’ve either done or not, like a baptism or an acid trip? is it human to have not grieved? is it inhuman to have done so but not recognized it? is a low-level, enduring state of grief why i exhale deeply without cause at points throughout the day and why when i take out the garbage at night the cold can sometimes make me want to weep? without a specific and narrative-driven trauma to be anchored in, am i an imposter, an emotional tourist? am i just lucky? am i just numb?

you don’t know what you don’t know, is meant to be profound, not cryptic. it means to dig deeper because depending on the nature of the session/chapter/curatorial statement – within is a power/trigger/sorrow that will make the stars align. but how many layers must i peel off before i accept that all there is is bone? do i front like i did in fact see novas along the way? do i suck it try of marrow and claim this was what i was looking for all along?

don’t think about it or it’ll happen, is a meant to be cryptic, not profound. growing up in an immigrant family in the bay means that every word is an invitation, a hex, or a manifestation. even as i test how the term grief feels in my gums, i can picture my mom tightening the sides of her mouth and tilting her head. in telepathy, this translates to you’re asking for it. maybe i am. maybe i’m pleading.

maybe, like most things, none of this is about me after all. perhaps a perfectly reasonable takeaway from all of this will be to respond to another’s grief with something more enlightened than i hope you feel better. aside from the flaccid share of hope that is usually dedicated to such a mantra, it immediately subjugates grief as an ailment, something to be cured of. i hope you feel better is far too truthful to be taken to heart, because it admits that i am so ill-prepared for what you are experiencing that all i know how to do is wish for it to end. that my body has no resilience against this contagion. it ignores that grief is already the remedy.

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