Grief [8-1-18]

Today I drew the cards

And they told me that to flourish

in my writing, and in my life,

I need to allow myself to feel my grief.

Because it withholds me,

Cripples me,

Retrains me.

That I must stop concealing my pain.

Stop hiding my broken emotions.

Stop hiding my sadness.

My loss is my power.

My devastation is my fuel.

My anguish is my battery.

My trauma is my fire.

To use in my writing, and to write about.

But it hurts.

It takes so much out of me

To put so much of a broken life on paper.

I blanket and hide and conceal and distract

So my heart isn’t heavy.

So I can sleep at night.

So I can find happiness in the things that used to make me happy.

I have been told that I am a pit of misery,

So I stopped, and became something else.

But apparently I need to shed my skin,

And allow myself to feel,

To heal and move on.

The Sound of Loneliness [3-12-19]

The sound of loneliness is

The lighting of a cigarette.

The noise of an all day Netflix binge.

A dog snoring in my bed, instead of a man.

The sound of loneliness is

My own voice thinking aloud and giving me pep talks.

The turning of pages in a book in dim light,

The shuffle of my feet as I pace across the floor.

The sound of loneliness is

The ignored notification dings on my phone,

And the clicking of keys as I text someone who doesn’t answer.

And audio books I don’t have to play through my headphones.

The sound of loneliness is

The tickle of a fish tank filter,

The soft rumble of its pump,

And hearing my parents talk in the next room because I moved back in.

The sound of loneliness is

A car pulling away,

A plane taking off,

A call being dropped.

The sound of loneliness is

Being sent straight to voicemail when I call,

The silence after I say “I love you”

The beating of my heart,

The taste of the salt in my tears.