My grief is a sickness towards everything around me. My grief is paralyzing resistance. My grief is the midwife to my anger. My grief is walking in a cloud of darkness. My grief is dressed in black. My grief is a slow poison leaking, it is a stone in my heart. My grief is tears buried so **** deep. My grief sounds like muffled screaming. My grief wants to scream. My grief wants love, to laugh, to be seen. My grief wants nothing but to exist without judgement. My grief is just trying to make its way out of me. My grief doesn’t want to be the enemy, it doesn’t want to make me cold. My grief wants to speak and tell you I’m sorry for how your grief was to you. My grief is lack of compassion because I’m hurting and feel like I must be silent. My grief is ancient. Universal. My grief plays out in dreams that co-star my guilt. My grief knows me inside and out. It has a place in every cell. My grief is held, cradled in the safe, warm arms of its mother. My grief has outgrown what I can hold. My grief lives within the soul of the universe, so I know you feel it too. My grief is the deep breaths. My grief is the fruit from a seed of love. My grief has roots. My grief is so sacred. My grief is you. It’s her. My grandmother. My grief is her last words. My grief is that I don’t feel I am living up to them. My grief misses your voice. And mine. My grief is for me, too. My grief is still grieving. My grief is knowing that it won’t ever stop.

Grief.
Grief.
Strange grief.
One moment it numbs you.
Holding you in denial.
And disbelief.
And the next.
It drowns you in
torrents of tears.
Like a fierce summer
rainstorm.
Where you can barely hold on.

Grief.
Grief.
Strange grief.
One moment you relish
in your new freedom.
Your new life.
And the next.
You miss them so much
that it feels like a slow death.

Grief.
Grief.
Strange grief.
All that you knew and loved.
Is not there anymore.
And in its place.
Is an empty void.
So hard to endure.
Sometimes you long for things
to be.
As they were before.
When you sit alone.
Pondering.
How life once was.
When your family was together.

Grief.
Grief.
Strange grief.
Oh, when will come relief?
Can time really heal this great wound?
Perhaps a little.
Yet the depth of the wound,
and the number of scars,
can only truly be healed.
By the Man of Sorrows.

Grief.
Grief.
Strange grief.
Will I ever feel whole and complete again?
When it feels like half of me has been
ripped away.
Leaving a gaping hole.

The Man of Sorrows.
Whispers to my soul.
"It is not irreparable."
I collapse in His arms.
And pour out my grief.
Grief.
Strange grief.
And He makes me whole.
Again.

My grief is a bus on the wrong side of the road,
I didn't see it coming
And neither did she.
My grief is the consoling, warm mug of tea.

The shape of my grief rolls down my throat,
It's scratched all over the words that I wrote.

My grief is a fence with flowers and cards,
It shakes in the wind when cars drive past.
My grief smells like rain,
My grief sounds like fireworks,
The frenzy, the lightshow, it brings back my pain,
Light up the sky and show me where it hurts.

My grief and I spend time like old friends,
We laugh,
We joke,
And she yells when I poke.

I poke and I **** til I rip her to shreds,
My grief is old
And my grief is new,
It drips in bright red,
And it scars where it grew.

My grief is tearing me from the inside out.
My grief smells like old stale blood,
My grief is a slow drip,
My grief is a flood.

My grief holds my hand in the hospital chair,
My grief grips my stomach,
My bones and
My hips,
My grief grabs my throat and tightens its grip.

My grief is the words I'm writing now.

My grief is these words I can't say out loud.

My grief and I are well-acquainted.
Two strangers sharing the same body.
How else to explain grief but as a mirror?
The grief and my body.
The grief or my body,
It is my grief every time.
I torture it,
I lay in it,
I set it on fire.
A still burning star,
A still living thing,
A still life of my first night alone.
The room is still, too.
It does not breathe
It does not turn over, reach for my hand,
Cough, or flutter its eyelids open onto my face.
It is just a room with two bodies.
I hold my grief,
I do.
I hold it until it stops bleeding,
Until it too is a lifeless thing,
I hold it.
How many more times can I say I miss you
without flinching?
How do you write about what it should've been without sounding like an *******?
Without losing yourself in the fantasy?
Like a hymn,
I give my grief to God but it doesn't go anywhere.
This is where the poet in me stops breathing,
And it hurts,
It hurts,
It hurts to breathe.
Pulsating through my body like adrenaline,
Fueling these poems with empty traces of your name.
The grief opens my mouth and says your name.
Over and over,
Chanting pleas of worship.
How are you still standing?
The grief knocks me over,
Like mid-day waves against the rocks,
And now I am a hollow body of devotion,
I tend to my grief like a garden
On my hands and knees,
and watch it
Grow into weeds.
At least there is life here somewhere.
I lay in my grief.
Two bodies laying in the dirt.
How can you just stand there and watch me die?

grief isn't sadness
grief isn't pain
grief isn't something
that words can explain

grief is an ocean
grief is a flood
grief is like having
your feet stuck in mud

yet grief is a stronghold
grief is a rope
grief holds onto you
when life's lost all hope

grief means it happened
grief shows it was here
grief is the proof
that love's never fair

You.
You were my shelter in the middle of my storm,
my shoulder to cry on when all felt forlorn.
I drew my strength from your love's warmth
But all that's past and alive no more.

You.
You’re a math expression with no solution,
an ingredient in the recipe of my confusion.
To my desperate pleas, you answered vaguely;
I just wanted to know how you’ve been doing lately,
after our love, after our loss.
after experiences we never thought would become fleeting memories
of a bond we hoped would last for centuries,
after long, late nights up spent envisioning a future with you and me,
of writing a book's last chapter that would end happily.
after broken promises that broke both our hearts.
Although words may break my heart
and sticks and stones may break my bones,
betrayal by someone who felt like home
makes me question myself and crushes my soul.
I thought I was your best friend, your dream girl, your ride-or-die,
but after you met her, that no longer mattered and you bade me goodbye,
while gravity gained on the tears that began to stream from my eyes,
nearly a year and a half of love cut short by the devil in disguise.

They say grief is a linear five-stage process,
which involves denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance,
but grief over him for me was a convoluted, confusing hodgepodge that muddled up all those feelings together.

Grief was denial over him loving me and leaving me all at once.

Grief was rage triggered by this sudden betrayal and loss of trust, by making out his love to be a lie,
by all my effort put into loving him unconditionally going down the drain in the blink of an eye.

Grief was wrestling between giving him liberty to fool around
and bargaining to salvage and kindle the embers of the fire
that once burned between us that could be redeemed.

Grief was depression over being taking for granted, depression over promises never kept,
depression over words that I fell for that broke my heart in the end.

Grief was struggling to accept the aftermath of it all, no matter how huge a hole it left in my heart.

Grief was accepting his departure one second, then reminiscing about the love we used to share and bargaining for it back.

Grief was struggling to be happy again, then remembering how he broke my heart and feeling either vexed or sad or both emotions at once.

Grief was loving him in the wake of my loss.

But grief wasn’t going to sting as much as it would if I had attached my self-worth onto the relationship. I already knew what love was before I met him.

I've found love in being saved by the blood of my Savior,

I've found love in friends and family who’ve seen me at my worst and chose to stay,

I've found love in education and learning more about the world around me outside of the classroom,

I've found love in my craft,

I've found love in other people's craft,

I've found love in many places where he isn't.

I will be fine.

I’ve found that love is not selfish; love is giving.
Love meant putting the needs of others before its own.
If one can’t understand that,
then they weren’t ready to commit themselves to a serious relationship with anyone,
nor can they maintain healthy, cordial relationships with other people in their life.

I already knew what love was before I met him; I just don’t
understand why people have such a hard time reciprocating it.

I thought he was my red string of fate.

I guess my eyes simply weren’t adjusted correctly to the light.

-a.l.

“When me and grief kiss
we use tongue”
Exchange each others DNA
And become made of one another
Become the threads that hold us together-
Change how we carry and express ourselves.
We are infatuated by the experience of getting to know
the shape of every curve and crevice
Before we dance our way into the center.
When me and grief kiss
we take it slow.
Conscious caressing of the spaces that have been silenced
Tender touching of the pain bodies
To reawaken sensations of love coursing through us-
No wiping the tears when we’re crying.
When me and grief kiss
we lick the tears streaming down our skin
Taste the salt of our wounds-
I let grief in.
Fully consumed
Swallow it whole so it can navigate my insides
And get digested
Break down to
Become the cells that nourish my love and passions.
When me and grief kiss
We get passionate
Like longing for the lover that breaks you open
And finally finding them in death’s darkest moments-
We spark fire,
Ignite ourselves into a version higher.
Burn the walls down that gatekeep our desires
And build a new empire.
When me and grief kiss
We hold each other close.
Press ourselves together-
I feel grief through layers and down into my bones.
No space between us,
The gaps are all closed.
Before me and grief kissed,
It courted me with hope.
Left me roses
Held my hand
Wrote me love notes.
When our lips finally touched,
I fell in love.
And now,
When me and grief kiss
We use tongue.