Although it has become the one thing I can count on, grief morphs itself into someone or something different so often that I wake up with a dismal sense of anticipation. I find myself not knowing what form it will take, however I know with dreadful certainty that it will, as always, be there. Sometimes it is a slinky woman with dark hair and ominous black eyes. She appears suddenly to me and challenges me without uttering a word. She flees when I try to reason with her, and looms uncomfortably close to me with no regard to the uneasiness she causes. Other times grief transforms itself into a heavy cold steel sword. This form is much more useful to me for the fact that I can pick it up, laboring intensely under its enormous weight and I can lunge it at the unkempt weeds of confusion that pop up in my mind cutting them down in search of a path to clarity. It has the ability to be so many things; a friend, an enemy, a weapon, a shield, an excuse, a reason. Whatever form it takes, welcome or not, grief will remain with me…a constant companion.