He started with an empty blackboard,
drew a horizontal rectangle,
and trisected it, adding a chalky illustration
to his verbal explanation.

The first box was for the still living, he said.
I promptly located myself there. The middle box
was the relationship to the departed. The far
right box was the departed. To make death

definite, he erased that box, and you were gone.
Then he explained that we had not only lost
our loved one but the connecting box between,
where most of us remained stuck.

He erased that box too, leaving us diminished
by two thirds of what we had before
needing this group of others
like us, fractions of our former selves.