What is death?
Are you capable of understanding it?
When do you really feel it?
Do you feel it when you look at a pale face on a still body, as if in sleep?
Do you feel it upon looking at a funeral pyre consuming a charred body?
Or do you feel it every time you look over your shoulder for a smile
And see a void that echoes in your heart
And all smiles disappear
When you realize what you've truly lost
And over time as you recover
You feel it when you visit a family
Amid laughter and joy you catch sight of a picture
A picture of a man you once knew
A man smiling down at you
Behind a flower garland adorning the frame that fails to contain his spirit
And once again you feel the pain of that loss,
Just as powerful as then day when the world lost a husband, brother, father, friend
And realize your incomplete circle
Will never be whole again