#sad poem

Grief stacks

Itself up

Up

Up

As you try and balance

Your daily tasks

Your emotions

Your pain

The tower

Wobbles

As you try

To do everything

You normally do

Everything you

Normally can

But right now

You can’t

And it comes

All

The way

Down

Come to me in the silence of the night;

Come in the speaking silence of a dream;

Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright

As sunlight on a stream;

Come back in tears,

O memory, hope, love of finished years.

O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,

Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,

Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;

Where thirsting longing eyes

Watch the slow door

That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live

My very life again though cold in death:

Come back to me in dreams, that I may give

Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:

Speak low, lean low

As long ago, my love, how long ago.

I measure every Grief I meet

With narrow, probing, eyes –

I wonder if It weighs like Mine –

Or has an Easier size.

I wonder if They bore it long –

Or did it just begin –

I could not tell the Date of Mine –

It feels so old a pain –

I wonder if it hurts to live –

And if They have to try –

And whether – could They choose between –

It would not be – to die –

I note that Some – gone patient long –

At length, renew their smile –

An imitation of a Light

That has so little Oil –

I wonder if when Years have piled –

Some Thousands – on the Harm –

That hurt them early – such a lapse

Could give them any Balm –

Or would they go on aching still

Through Centuries of Nerve –

Enlightened to a larger Pain –

In Contrast with the Love –

The Grieved – are many – I am told –

There is the various Cause –

Death – is but one – and comes but once –

And only nails the eyes –

There’s Grief of Want – and grief of Cold –

A sort they call “Despair” –

There’s Banishment from native Eyes –

In sight of Native Air –

And though I may not guess the kind –

Correctly – yet to me

A piercing Comfort it affords

In passing Calvary –

To note the fashions – of the Cross –

And how they’re mostly worn –

Still fascinated to presume

That Some – are like my own –

If we are fortunate,

we are given a warning.

If not,

there is only the sudden horror,

the wrench of being torn apart;

of being reminded

that nothing is permanent,

not even the ones we love,

the ones our lives revolve around.

Life is a fragile affair.

We are all dancing

on the edge of a precipice,

a dizzying cliff so high

we can’t see the bottom.

One by one,

we lose those we love most

into the dark ravine.

So we must cherish them

without reservation.

Now.

Today.

This minute.

We will lose them

or they will lose us

someday.

This is certain.

There is no time for bickering.

And their loss

will leave a great pit in our hearts;

a pit we struggle to avoid

during the day

and fall into at night.

Some,

unable to accept this loss,

unable to determine

the worth of life without them,

jump into that black pit

spiritually or physically,

hoping to find them there.

And some survive

the shock,

the denial,

the horror,

the bargaining,

the barren, empty aching,

the unanswered prayers,

the sleepless nights

when their breath is crushed

under the weight of silence

and all that it means.

Somehow, some survive all that and,

like a flower opening after a storm,

they slowly begin to remember

the one they lost

in a different way…

The laughter,

the irrepressible spirit,

the generous heart,

the way their smile made them feel,

the encouragement they gave

even as their own dreams were dying.

And in time, they fill the pit

with other memories

the only memories that really matter.

We will still cry.

We will always cry.

But with loving reflection

more than hopeless longing.

And that is how we survive.

That is how the story should end.

That is how they would want it to be.

Your absence has gone through me

Like thread through a needle.

Everything I do is stitched with its color.

If i ever tell you about my past, it’s never because i want you to feel sorry for me but so you can understand why i am who i am

Why are feelings so hard for me to feel

They are hard for me to feel because I was never shown how.

I was shown how to pretend they don’t exist, to drown them with drinks, to choke on my tears instead of letting them flow.

Master of ignoring my feelings.

The longer that I ignore them the bigger they get and the bigger they get the harder it becomes to hold back the tears begging to come out of my eyes

And I cry

I don’t know how to cry

I shut my eyes

And clench my teeth

Until my mouth rips itself open and the wails break out of their cages

And I cry

The tears run down my cheeks

Like it’s a fucking race

First one to the floor wins.

I don’t feel better after I cry

I feel empty and alone

And left with nothing inside where the tears used to hide.

I don’t know how to cry

It’s uncomfortable and foreign to me

I only cry when I am alone

Driving down the freeway in the dark

Always feels like the right time

The music is almost loud enough to drown my gasping for breath.

To drown my grasping at death.

I don’t know why I cry…

Watching the days just pass me by

Doing nothing worthy with my time..

Why do I feel unworthy?

Nobody is here to hurt me… but me

I’m just fucking sad

I’m releasing hurt from every cell of my being

Release isn’t pretty, it’s dirty, it’s painful

I don’t mean to be ungrateful

But I just want to be done

I love when it rains when I’m sad

Like the sky knows how I feel.

The thunder rolls

as if to yell the words I cannot speak.

The lightning strikes

like the anger lights

me up.

And soon the storm passes

The sun will come out again.

I will be okay.

I just want to give in sometimes

Give into what begs me to quit

I beg my shadow self to let go

We are no longer a good fit

We might have connected for a bit

But now it’s time for me to move on

I’m tired of not feeling like myself

I’m tired of feeling like I don’t belong

Feels like the real me is long gone

And I don’t know where she went

It’s like she got up and ran away

I need to find her again.

I just want to fall asleep

I don’t think I want to wake up

Tired of living this lie

I just can’t seem to break up

With this idea I have in my mind

That somehow we’ll end up together

It seems that’ll never happen

And I can’t wait forever

So I’m all alone

Just laying here

Wishing I could fall asleep

But when I sleep I dream of you

And my dreams never seem to come true.

will you turn my brittle body into poetry

when the cold kiss of death finally reaches my solitary corpse

will you interpret the path i skipped along

writing brilliant words of how my spirit dances in the wind

or will i be forgotten?

just to become a feast for the life that lives under the surface

scribbled lines in the once lively flesh

it was never pen ink that cherished me so

if my name has not been lost

and you happen to graze upon my initials in a history book

run to my tombstone

letting it be known that it wasn’t all for nothing

recite to my grave lovely words

soothing my wandering soul

remove my past from the chain around my ankle

let my image seep into the setting sun

allow all that is left of me to be the stanzas of a lifetime

an exhibit of beautiful words bleeding from a lifeless body

permit the future to forget the configuration of my skeletal being

but to devote their time to decipher the words you have strung together to recall my existence

please oh please let me be poetry

- sundayafternoonsedentary

I should’ve jumped when the ball-point pen across the room started scribbling

scratching the surface of a worn down notepad

hovering over it, I saw my name

in bolded letters I read the word ALONE

how dare a mystery writer reach into my soul

ripping out my deepest feeling

addressing it like you would the day’s weather

I would’ve complained, if there were anyone to hear me speak

the invisible critic marked another word

AFRAID

my hand connected with the paper as an arrow pointed to my destroyed nail beds

I guess the analysis wasn’t wrong as I drew back my shaky hands

oh lover,

how I miss us

things were simple

the world wasn’t so big

we didn’t have to be anything to impress

it was just you, me, and a sky full of newly named stars

i’m sitting here in the peace of midnight

just trying to reciprocate the terrible feelings i’ve felt

never will i be able to comprehend how i felt with you

and nothing will be said about how my heart shattered when you left

all i have left is the darkness welcoming like an old friend

dead girl.