Ice Floes

I used to think; that is, before the after; that grief was much like a river.  That once I was thrown from my familiar place of land; I needed to struggle against the current and swim to the other side to find a new land to live.  But now that I find myself in this water; I realize that grief is more like the sea.  I used to be a California girl; feet in the sand, basking in the sun.  Now I am a polar bear in the Arctic Sea drifting on a melting ice floe.  There is no such thing as land anymore; so I no longer look for it.  I look out across the horizon and to the Great Bear constellation, which does not set in this Arctic place.