[290] Grief begets Grief

Here is a hybrid of a prose poem and a poem I wrote recently. Any feedback is appreciated:

And then child, there’s nothing I can say to help. The only way through is to sit with the grief. The longer you sit, the more it’ll fidget and shift. One day, It’ll get up and start going out on walks and you won’t have to sit with it anymore.

But you are no fool. And child of no fool, how could be fool? The fated reunion comes. By then, it is no stranger: the grief of family how could not be family? Even when it’s left, it won’t feel like it has.

The longer you sit with it, the longer will be its walks. Yet no matter how far, it remembers its spawn: a boomerang flung into air; a lost child tracing back home; a toddler rushing to mother.

You have given birth. You have become its guardian. It knows and loves only you. But you wish to discard it: flinging it into vacuum, changing your address, mutilating it so it cannot rush.

One day you will, only when you’ve lost all hope of a day with neither the presence of grief nor the anticipation of its presence. You’ll glance to the forsaken spot on happenstance and see and think nothing. It is all but for a mere instant. After which, you will even forget having forgot. But then, it is done: The axe kills when it is swung, not when it cuts flesh.

 

You have killed.

You have abandoned.

You have chosen not to bury.

 

That day, you will be filled

But with what?

What will you gain from killing your immortal child?

 

killed, a phantom rises

Grief begets grief:

Your grief too will then sit with its grief

 

And then child, there’ll be nothing I could say to help.

Crit [395]