Death by Words: A Selection of Poetry

grieving

I've never known such debilitating sadness as those first few weeks without you – I'd grown so attached and used to you. For the longest time I didn't feel whole; I didn't feel human – I still don't.

I have been but an empty and hollow body, wandering around the house. I've been walking down these corridors looking for you, tracing my fingers along the walls, looking for clues. That's where you stood in my hallway and greeted me home, that's where we all sat around the fire in winter and told ghost stories. Now the only horror story is mine, but this one is real; and the only ghost here is me, but I'm not sure I'm real.

All I do is sit in the kitchen and stare at the counter – you sat there, you leaned against that marble so casually, arms folded, you placed your mug of coffee there. Sometimes I convince myself that I can still smell you, that I am walking into random patches of your scent – but really I know that it is just your cologne that I am wearing. Sometimes I convince myself that I am healing and getting better – but really I know that I am only getting better at pretending, I'm starting to fool myself. Strangers will stare at me in the street, they can tell something is wrong, I think maybe I start crying without realising – I wouldn't know, I'm numb to physical feeling, and emotional, I suppose. I tell them that I am fine, even though they didn't ask. Even though I'm not.

Where's my heart, baby? Where'd you take it? What did you do with it? Where are you? Stop hiding. Come out, come out, wherever you are.

When it gets bad, I look for you. Are you on the roof? No. Are you hiding in the trees? No. Are you sitting on the porch steps? No. Are you waiting in your car outside? No. Are you under the quilt? No. Are you under the bed? No – that's reserved for monsters and echoes of a childhood only. Come out, come out, wherever you are.

We were supposed to be fate; we were supposed to be destiny.

Waking up is becoming a challenge. I find myself dreaming of different ways I could die. I don't know why it hasn't happened yet. I put myself in dangerous situations in the hopes of my wish coming true. I don't know why I don't do it myself. Maybe it would make me a hypocrite. Maybe I'm just a coward. Maybe I feel like I deserve the suffering, the punishment. I deserve to wallow in grief and guilt.

I stare at the moon some nights and wonder if maybe we will again meet somewhere in space, as particles and dust. I hope that if we do then you'll never have it in you to leave me again, because I'm not sure I could survive it a second time, capable of thought and with consciousness or not.

You'll forever remain a part of me, just as a piece of my soul resides within you, wherever you are, whatever form you're now in.