Indifferent

I cried when I heard you had gone.

Where to, I wondered.

What was the point of all the years?
Why leave me with this gaping hole in my reality —
a hole that can never be mended,
never be filled.

For you were irreplaceable…
one of a kind.

But then I looked to my left
and then my right —

she had lost a brother,
him a father,
her a mother,
them a child.

And then I realized:

Life was never unfair —
it is simply indifferent.

Indifferent to our joys.
Indifferent to our pains.
Indifferent to our suffering.

It doesn’t spite one
and reward the other.

It doesn’t play favorites.

I don’t know what life is —
but the indifference
allows me to take the brutality
a lot less personally.