The Second Time Around

The Second Time Around

You think you know the drill the second time you lose
The stages and the casseroles, the managed grief, the news
You tell your friends and family — you’ve been here before
Returned customer to loss, familiar with the chore

But then the new grief arrives and all your knowledge falls
The college of the previous don’t translate to these walls
This person, this relation, this rendering of pain
Requires its own curriculum, its own peculiar reign

The second time you lose someone you think you know
But you don’t — the knowledge of that first grief doesn’t show
You the way through this one, the this-one
Each loss its own accounting, its own cross to bear
The particular, the specific, the this-one there

The second loss is easier because you know the game
The mechanics of the mourning, the social and the personal frame
Already navigated waters where you nearly drowned
The second time you’re grieving, your survival’s already found

But second loss is harder — it’s compounded in the night
Fresh grief plus the echo of the first, the accumulated weight
Of a man who’s been here twice now, who carries both the pain
The door opens to a room where previous grief still reigns

And second loss recalibrates the way you see yourself
The narration of the self in relation to this shelf
Of accumulated endings, your developing relationship
With loss itself — the company you keep, the given and the gift

Each death its own education, each grave a different school
The first one taught you nothing for the second’s cruel rule
And when the third one comes around — and it will,
it always will —
You’ll be a returning student to the same unforgiving hill