Sunday 9 November 2014

Getting along with grief.


My grief and I go walking 
together everywhere.
It’s curled up like a foetus 
somewhere behind my breasts.
It’s not human. 
It’s not animal, or plant.
It just is. 

It’s a something I can’t describe, 
because I can’t see it. 
But I can feel it.
I feel it there almost always.
The moment I take my mind off 
mundane matters like being alive,
and staying alive,
there it is. 

Sometimes it sleeps 
but when it is awake 
it is a palpable ache I can do nothing about.

A name, a song, a conversation, a smell.

Gothic words from Books I once loved.
An I Love You whispered in the margin of a dead boy's letter.
Or just numbers added up on a scrap of notepaper,
in the quavering script of an old man’s hand.

A feather.
A regret.
A memory.

All these things waken it.

Some tears, some sighs, some pain,
And then I am ready to soothe it to sleep and try to ignore it again.

No comments: