The Bait

So I was just plodding along doing my thing in the office and I suddenly thought of this prose poem that I read last year for my poetry workshop. The first lines goes "This is not an elegy..". Now, I've never lost anyone to death before, not someone who was close to me anyway, so I can't quite say that I understand such a loss right now. But I think this excerpt from The Bait cuts pretty close to what loss is like, I cried both the first and second time I read it:

But why am I telling you this? Because I want you to love me? To pity me? To understand I've suffered and that excuses my deficiencies? To see how loss is loss and no elegy no quiet talk late at night among loved ones who suddenly feel the inadequacy of their love and the expression of that love can take it away? Or give it back? Perhaps even loss is lost? My brother is gone and the world, you, me, are no better for it. There was no goodness in his death. And there is none in this poem, eleven years later and still confused. An attempt, one might say, to come to terms with his death as if there was somewhere to come to, as if there were terms. But there is nowhere to come to; there are no terms. Just this spewing of words, this gesture neither therapy nor catharsis nor hopelessness no consolation. Not elegy but a small crumb. An offering.