It’s just a story.
It’s just a story,
and these deep heavings
of vicarious grief
need not possess me
any longer than I choose

It’s a story, and its aftermath
was just a dream, just a dream
accompanied by torments
of the almost sleeper by my side

It all got slept away,
it all got side-stepped
in my midnight insistence
on immunity

So why, in the shadow
of this overcast afternoon,
do I feel the mounting, behind my eyes,
of what would be tears
if they felt sure they had a cause?

Every story must need
to be heard, be felt,
sweep up a community to circle it,
to deliver it down
to where all is resolved
in the peace-deep ever stirring sea.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 21, 2016