I have trouble choosing the words, so I repeat them with variations. The problem is the verbs. The past tense, I suppose. The past tense is the sad one, the nevermore. But it’s more than that. I didn’t cry when I heard the news. I didn’t cry in her little room, where she smiled and told jokes about morphine. I didn’t cry at the silence in me when her faith in heaven didn’t break, when she was resting in cliché, and my critic’s hat fell off. I cried a little at her funeral. But I cry more now because I want to write words about her, and it feels violent. Like carving up a tombstone.

—from ”Mortal Grammar” by Adam Smith from Brevity 36