A Poem a Day

Keeps the heartache at bay

Category: grief

  • The Weight of Memories

    The Weight of Memories

    “I will have had to remember you, longer than I have known you.” C.C. Aurel


    That notion alone makes me immeasurably sad.
    Can you imagine the weight of having to carry you with me?
    Knowing you once existed but no longer exist.
    But that’s not true either, is it?
    You exist in me, in my heart and in my memories
    but that will never be enough for me.
    I so long for the physicality of it all; for one last touch, not whispers of a scent that once was.
    How is it possible that the years will trickle by, and I can only carry you with me in my mind.
    I so long to have you back in my arms.
    The space in my heart you occupy is now weighed down carrying the bits and pieces of a soul you left behind.
    I hope you’re comfortable in your new confines
    but oh how I long for you to be free again.
    To be here again.

  • The Sound of Grief

    The Sound of Grief

    “There is no grief like the grief that does not speak” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


    It’s not so much that grief cannot speak, its moreso that all it does is scream.

    So much so that I’ve learned to block it out,

    Allowing the days to drown it in monotony and routine. But then there are the times it feels like it’s drowning me.

    Holding my head beneath the waves,

    Allowing them to crest in my lungs,

    over and over, until finally, there is reprieve.

    The swelling of a monsoon that drags everything with it.

    The peace of a moment before destruction.

    A shallow breath before it all comes crashing down.

    That’s what grief speaks like, it’s what I hear all the time.

  • The Sound of Existence

    The Sound of Existence

     

    Silence is nothing more that the absence of sound.

    Death is nothing more than the absence of life.

    And what is life, if not sound, feeling, seeing.

    What is life if not tasting, yearning, ongoing.

    Because even in death we do not end.

    Donde hubo fuego, cenizas quedan,

    Where there was once love, an imprint remains.

    On the world, a place, a home, a person or people.

    Is death the absence of life?

    Then what is it that keeps us alive?

    That keeps us going when the goal for us all is to die?

    Isn’t that the pathway to the grand prize?

    How we all arrive at the eternal life promised to us by the word of God?

    Is death the answer to life?

    Does that make life suffering, in turn making death a way out?

    Have we become so sated with questions that we have forgotten to live?

    Was this the curse unleashed from the tree of knowledge, when Eve made the decision to eat?

    Is this endless crisis of existence the fruit that bore of that tree?

    Endless questions and endless dreams.

    If hope was the last thing that remianed in pandora’s box,

    does that not make it a plague all the same?

    If silence is nothing, and death is nothing

    Does that not then mean that within us lies something?

    That in order to fill a space you need more than what physically exists in this space.

    There is life, there is death and there is after, even if the something we were ceases to exist.

  • Finding Calm in the Chaos

    Finding Calm in the Chaos

    It’s just that,

    Sometimes it feels like I’m drowning. 

    Like, I want to dip my toes in the ocean on a hot summer day,

    But as soon as they touch the water

    A hurricane of wind and rain sweeps me away.

    Most of the time, I’m spinning.

    Being hurled around and around,

    Fighting against the air being pushed into my lungs.

    Sometimes I command the storm.

    The thunder and lightning,

    The tsunamis and monsoons;

    We are one and the same, breathing into one another.

    Other times, I fly into the eye of the storm; floating on silent waves.

    As everything rages away

    All I can do is focus on every breath.

    On, staying afloat until I can swim back to shore.

    I can’t shout, I have to make every breath count.

    I can’t cry, I couldn’t muster up an SOS if I tried.

    And then there are the times I actually make it back to the line between the land and the sea.

    When I realize the only thing damaged in the storm was me.

    I take my time away from the shoreline.

    Away from the waves, and the sun.

    From the calls of the sky, and the horizon.

    Until, inevitably, I find myself back at that line between the land and the sea.

    Between living and existing.

    Inching my toes closer, wondering what the outcome might be this time.

    To see if we might endure the pain of life.

    If we might survive the perils of treading the open waters before us.

    Or if floating, fighting and drowning is all there is to be found.

  • Grieving a Mother and a Friend

    Grieving a Mother and a Friend

    You were once beautiful to me, and now I find myself constantly searching the pain in your face for that beauty.

    I don’t know how to cope with what you’ve lost.

    Not for me, not for you.

    I don’t know how to accept these changes,

    In me, in you.

    I so desperately want to rewind time to relive life close to you.

    I’d gladly suffer through all of the bad of it meant I could also relive all of the good.

    And there was good, right? 

    We were happy most days, even if the dark days loomed above us, behind us, around us.

    But we laughed, we danced, we lived.

    And now, the beauty has dried up, and all that’s left is this husk of you.

    The will to live fled the banshee cries that come out of you.

    I don’t know how to get it to come back.

    I keep trying to gather the smallest pieces of us, but it feels like life is spilling sand through the cracks in our hourglass.

    Some days I wish you were gone, that the present was a wisp of a memory on our timeline and the past a balm to the scars on our hearts.

    I want to rush into tomorrow with open arms to welcome my life back but I can’t seem to hit the ground running.

    Because I want you to be there too.

    I want you to be here now, but everyday we lose more and more of you. 

    I don’t want to hate you, not in the slightest or at all, I just want you back.

    I want it all back the way it was, because you’d smile at me while you chew your food, a knowing smile. 

    One that rosies up your cheeks and makes your eyes twinkle.

    I hate that I hate you, because it’s not you, hasn’t been you in a long while but, sometimes, you look at me and that knowing smile creeps up, tinting your cheeks, letting me see that slight twinkle that shines just for my sisters and me

    And I can almost believe that I still love you and you still love me.

    But then it’s gone, swallowed up by your screams

    Wails of agony that pierce right through me.

    You’re still beautiful to me, even if life right now is really ugly.

    I might hate you right now but it’s not you I hate, it’s this disease.

    This hate exists only because there is so much love for you in me, without a home, without a place to sleep.

    I wish I could give you my strength, my years.

    I wish I could cure you with my tears. 

    I wish I could allay your fears.

    But alas, there is nothing more I can do but shed sweet poetry for you.