Summer of Grief - Poems (Online Chapbook)

Stages

I. Denial

One day, you think that you may hear her voice

carried up-street, as it did in your childhood;

loud, approaching. You believe, just

for a moment, that you see her

taking the steps to your home,

sea-green and turquoise headscarf

containing a head of gray frizz. But you are wrong,

and you have been wrong too often lately.

II. Anger

It was your last time in the house.

Your dad and uncle were too busy

carrying her life away, in boxes, to notice

when you could take no more of the sight;

room after room, empty, gutted like fish.

And so you slipped out to the

porch, to catch your breath,

and it was there you witnessed

a small black ant struggle to carry

a crumb. The righteous indignation

bubbled forth in you; what is so special

about this ant, that it should live

when she can no longer?

There is something in your eye.

Dark pupil swallows dying iris; it is hate.

You smear the pavement with your shoe.

III. Bargaining

Look hard, study the room --

what else is there to give? Surely

there will be something. Dig for the spare

change from behind dressers, sandwiched

under mattresses, between couch cushions.

Will this be enough to buy back her soul?

No?... No. This will not suffice, you must

find something more valuable.

Cry now, tear apart the room --

what heartless kind of joke is this,

that there is nothing in the world, no

piece of jewelry, no useless trinket

that will appease the cruel god

to prompt her safely to return.

IV. Depression

Bleak! Though the sun is far

too strong. You have turned brown,

like the grass. No longer able to cry about it,

tired eyes. Each day after is a blank wall

with no sun upon it. How you long to spatter it

with bloody colors,  the beautiful hues

of a spilt life. The hurt, the hurt, still

raw and fresh as yesterday.

You lie from bed and watch the

shadows creep over your ceiling,

the slow crawl of hours melting

like a seven-day candle.

It has been a week.

You're flat-lined, numb.

Your mind is static, no longer

capable of tuning in to life

though you've worked all the dials,

pulled the right levers. Your head

remains a-hiss, all that will

blanken the screen is

rest. And so, you do.

V. Acceptance

You've learned better now

than to reason why, for time

can only dull the metaphorical knife,

but cannot heal the stab wounds. No

longer do you question death's motive,

for now  you understand;

that just as surely as summer

comes each year,

it must also go.