Death is inevitable and unforgiving.
Emotions just as unforgiving and unrelenting.
Regret and pain swell up,
A lump in your throat,
Swallowed to form the pit in your stomach.
Nights extend and days shorten with every passing thought.
If time had a hand, surely you'd hold it.
Pulling them back, begging-
pleading not to move forward.
Yet instead you're dragged along, Death only in the distance.

Sometimes I still wake up at night.
To my mid-day terrors.
And my room always feels empty.
My eyes fall off back into time.

I'd always hear you say
That we'd be better off
But who are you to say so
When you're not here anymore.

And I wake up in the after glow
Of the sun from my midnight terrors
This place is just too much for me.
I'd rather not stop to look and see.

And I remember that you'd always say
Nothing would last that long
But how could you tell me that
When you've been gone for far too long.

When I dive back to the sea of dreams
I close my eyes and can't help but think
You were right all along
But I can't tell you that anymore.

And yet as I drift off into the evening sky
Your voice is still as clear as it was that time.
And I wish that I could have this back
Your kind words and the hope you'd bring.

And all the parts I lost that you took from me.

-Persephone

First the diagnosis
Then the prognosis
Indeed it is cirrhosis

Alongside the cancer
Is the answer
They will no longer be a dancer

First comes shock
At no longer being a chip off the old block
Wanting to throw a rock

It just can’t be they are too young
Why has it spread to the lung
Will these be the last words rung

I want to ring its neck
But we need all hands on deck
So emotions are kept in check

Then sadness comes along
Oh this is so wrong
They want us to be strong

All leading to depression
And many a session
Even a confession

Can’t they be given another chance
Couldn’t there be a different circumstance
But in the end we all end up at acceptance

The five stages of grief
In a brief
Poem is my belief

Andreas Simic ©

Thank the Gods you didn't come back from the dead to haunt me again today

I may have actually believed you
I may have actually taken your word again
I may have taken you back and done more damage to myself than there already is

I hope you stay dead
But when a ghost is in love with you, well
Sometimes they just come back for you
Singing love songs and whispering sweet nothings on the wind

It's terrifying, really

Thinking of the way the wind blows
It seems a bit lighter today.
Closing my eyes,
I lose moments of my existence;
A year left to live…
Is it a curse to have the task
Of writing daily?
Should I blame the sky
For all the wear
I’m undertaking,
Before an undertaker
Assesses my lifeless figure
And helps others remember
Who I was--
Resurrecting me with makeup
And sewing me back together?

Is it a curse to be alive,
Living only half of what was promised
As sleep takes the stars from my sight
And blinking steals moments
Out of every frame of my life?
It’s hard to be witness
To such an existence
I wonder what their punishment
Will be if I miss a day posting.
Should I resign?
Or will they just force me?
I’m afraid of what’s to come,
But blinking is stealing
Moments of my life away--
Moments, I surmise, that in bargaining,
I could regain.

Excuse me, sir
Can I buy a bit of time?
Death day is coming fairly soon
Looking at stars, I could read the signs
Slicing scythes through souls
To leave a hole in my whole being.
Without any modification still,
I feel a broken existence is all they're seeing.
That's not to say this life is shallow
But the targets I am aiming just end up breaking
When my points are sitting hollow.

Sir, if I could have a moment more,
My life fluid dripping from my heart
Puddling the bathroom floor.
No one tends to notice, no one stops
Today, I kick the bucket. Tomorrow, they just mop.
Forgetting to be human
To all other human beings,
Writing cries but no one's reading.

Please, if I could have a second...
Okay, no hand wavering, I get it.
Just let me close my eyes
Drifting into another spectrum.

You wish to turn back time
So you can live a little longer
With the ones you love
But the ache will be stronger
And they will still be gone
So don’t beg for the impossible.



© Sofia Villagrana 2018

i think i went about this all wrong
this grief you gave me
because i skipped ahead
read the end
i fell straight through the floorboards
into bargaining
begging, anything, everything
my kingdom for your time

i brushed straight passed denial
i knew what you’d done before you did it
the forth step broke under my feet
it hit me with a vividness
it left me starving, sleepless
i laid there next to you
and felt the beast i thought i’d slain
open up it's hungry maw

my acceptance after was for my sake
a forgiveness of myself for believing you
but never forgiveness of what you did
and it was in this acceptance that i found anger
a stranger, someone who kisses my cheek
and says how tall i’ve grown but it's name i had forgotten
until now, now when it bathes me in it's fire
and i am cleansed by it, burned out of the beast’s jaw

and this cruelty i feel, it is yours alone
my pains in the past brought indifference
so often there was nothing left to fashion into hatred
but, by god, you gave me so much
so much fleshy material, patches of your selfishness
whole sheets of your betrayal, ribbons of your pettiness
/you ******* child/
i can make quilts out of your mistake
murals of this viciousness you’ve given me
i shall wrap it around my naked shoulders and sleep in it.