And I Weep

I stand at the ocean and grasp handfuls of sand.

Not the dry stinging wind-carved sand of the dunes,
Nor the damp, hard-packed sand you can run on.

No. The wave-churned sand where the water meets the land.

I grasp handfuls of that sand and I squeeze.
Yet with the growing pressure,
The sand slides through my fingers, lost to that ocean.
I am powerless to stop the flow.

Your words, your memories now are like that sand.
Sluicing through fingers,
No squeezing can hold them.
Powerless to stop what is swept away,
Forever lost to that ocean that is all of us.

And I weep.