FOR THE STUDENT WHO TOLD ME THEIR GRANDMOTHER DIED… TWICE - EZRA FOX
February 14, 2025
For the Student Who Told Me Their Grandmother Died… Twice
They tell you grief comes with permissions,
a hall pass, an extension, a moment's reprieve.
As if pain needs documentation, as if suffering
requires a formal declaration.
First, let me say: I am sorry for your loss.
Grief can swallow a semester whole,
shrink it smaller than the space between
a B- and a B.
When your email landed in my inbox,
my own grandmother surfaced. Her voice
rising through memory, like wind. Strange
how quickly I filled your loss with my own,
how grief recognizes grief.
Then, your second email arrived, same story,
different month, grandmother dying again,
and I understood: not a lie, but a different kind of loss.
Oh, dear student,
if you've learned to summon ghosts
as shields against the living dark, I understand.
If the weight of now, the deadlines, the discussions,
the endless notifications of crisis feels
like watching avalanches through glass,
you don't need to conjure grandmothers.
Let me be sorry, instead, for the losses
too quiet to name. The best friend who moved
away mid-sentence, the morning you woke
to find your childhood had slipped out
while you slept, for the nights your anxiety grows
teeth, for the days when planes cast shadows
like dark prophecies, when your phone
becomes too heavy to lift, or when
your reflection wears a stranger's face.
Sorry for the stuffed bear guarding your empty
bed at home, for mistaking homesickness
for food poisoning again, for dormitory mirrors
that make you question your belonging.
And, for every time you've swallowed words
like broken glass, thinking no one wants
to hear your truth.
You don't need to dress your pain.
I won't think less of you for simply living
in a world that demands performance
of our wounds. I see how they told you
small hurts don't deserve attention,
that missing class requires tragedy.
Let the deadlines dissolve.
There are more important things in this life:
geese cutting shadows across fog-draped quads,
laughter echoing in stairwells at midnight,
the way strangers cluster under bus stop awnings
during rain, and each text from a beloved,
that sits like a crystal in your pocket.
Ezra Fox lives and writes in San Francisco, CA. In their writing, Ezra is curious about impermanence and non-duality, and how it pertains to their subjects of lineage, queerness, and spirituality. Learn more about Ezra, and read their other publications at ezrafox.net.