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Unpolished Ink Sep 2023
Do not mourn for me in sombre colours
black and grey was not my way to be
do not drown me in sorrowing hymns
praise me with the tunes of larks
I always loved their spiral song in flight
celebrate the spirit that was me
forget the dark
embrace my light
Coleen Mzarriz Jul 2023
A jarring, disturbing day for a summer breeze in mid-July. The streets were covered by the footsteps of people hustling, hoping they’d be early for their 8–5 job, and babies crying when their mom left for a meeting that started at 11 a.m. And I bought my favorite coffee—a caramel latte.
 
It was as if my worn-out hands, which have been clawed out by the hand of the disrespectful ghost who’s been living inside my apartment, coveted the sun and thought it was time for him to be kissed by the summer and embraced by the coldness of the winter—it’s coming and it’s starting to cry a little.
 
Drop by drop, until my jacket seeped the harsh trickle of the rain. Terribly enough, I was standing near the pedestrian lane, and the universe ribboned the strings between me and this disrespectful ghost. Mind you, he was a stranger once. And we both looked at each other.
 
He was waiting for the bus, and I am too. He’s on the second seat, and I’m on the left, near the window. Third row. He loves music and likes to listen to it when he’s bathing. He loves writing just like I do, and he loves to hum his favorite songs just like I do.
 
He loves basketball, but he rarely plays, and he loves to daydream and has two imaginary friends. He loves to hold my hand and kiss me on the cheek. But then he died. And he smells like the earth—with thick thorns covering half of his body, bleeding through his shirt, and losing his smile.
 
But then again, the earth sent him back, and I started to mourn. I no longer know his name, but I mourn for him. It’s time for this ghost to go, and it happened that we’re both on the same bus, and he was disrespectful enough to not inform me that he’s leaving again.
 
Perhaps I’ve come to terms with the fact that tenants like him will come and go, and their loose threads will always be tied to me. I’ve yet to let go. He’s dead, and he’s now a stranger who once walked down the street.
 
My caramel latte is now lukewarm, and I threw it away, but I was early for work. What a jarring, disturbing day.
Perhaps in another universe, we’re both seated in the same row and we’re holding each other’s hands.
Claire Elizabeth Jul 2023
How does one lose a creature gracefully…?

Is it possible to just be okay with a quick goodbye under the hum of those awful fluorescent lights? Would it have been easier, kinder, softer, if the lights were lamps scattered about the space, yellow and murmuring? When does the gut-wrneching tightening stop? Will I ever let the sadness of it leave my chest?

Sitting in this complacent grief even months after it all is kind

I know that the grief will let me cry and I know that when I do, it doesn’t judge me for my “I wish things could go back to normal.” Because regardless of how familiar the New Ways become, it still isn’t the same. I am bookended by these two creatures that have and continue to adore the Earth I walk on. But the Old Ways stick with us for longer than we’d maybe like.

But in filling that little empty nook, the small nest where a dog named Nelson used to lie, I’ve forced myself to grow, to become changed.

My adult life started when I got Nelson, and it started again when I had to let him slip through my trembling fingers. And it continues on with this new creature named Franklin, who sits just to the left of that Nelson shaped divot.

Loving things that leave you utterly shattered is what makes us so mendable, forgetful, endlessly desperate for devotion…

The whole scene will replay in 10 years time, and I will be even more ruined then.
Hollie Jul 2023
When I lay in bed
It's your scent
Soaked and washed over me
Your arms like shelter
Keeping the day away
Because lord knows I've needed you
More recently than before
Days spanding into weeks then months
Hunger screaming in my pit
Dark and stormy
Are the skies that hover over
But when I lay
You are there
You are always there
In memories I keep you alive
But outside our bed
Your body is where it's always been
Back at the cemetery
Where I had to say goodbye
Mourning death
brai Jun 2023
It's sad to see when the ladybugs mourn
Somber dark faces with whites turned down
Trudging along forlorn and lost
For they mourn for the love of the world
They feel the cracking of the great pines
As they give the last ***** to their lovers
They sense the splitting of creeks
Two lives to leave and lead separately
As the bubbling water gets faster and clear
They mourn the day coming to an end
And they mourn the cold of the night
They feel the sadness of a courting buck
Instinctually driven but thoughts vacant
Individuality non existent, in an evolutionary daze
Predators chase prey and the rest is nil
They cary their spots as sinful stains of the world
Feeling through their sextupled appendages
Every feeling, consideration, entrenched to a wing
To feel enough, is to know what you have.
And it's hard to see it, when your eyes are only on the prize.
Destiny C Aug 2022
I'm a Feminist
But
My ovaries are in pain.

I'm a woman
But
I don't feel connected to my main vein.
I'm bleeding in places much deeper than my-

I'd say the word
But i'll refrain.

Instead of being taught to embrace,
I've learned to revel
In
The
Pain
Of
Being
A
woman.

Soft
Weak
Instead of
strong
And unique.

Instead of taking agency,
I'm treated like an antique.
Fragile,
Even though i've survived
Everything men told me...

(I'll leave you to ponder but
won't describe. )

I love being a woman,
But it's a love/hate relationship
I can't lie. 
I take pride
But when my head hits the pillow,
I do cry.

In fact, I mourn.

I mourn the excitement society had for me when I was born.
Now i'm rejected,
Because of children i haven't ejected,
Penises i haven't erected,
a husband i haven't selected.

A pariah if you will,
But i have my own will.
Something women are shamed for because we feel,
Feel the need to take back our power
Because if we don't,
Someone else will,
Tell us
What to wear,
How to heal,
**** our souls until we cant feel,
Leaving us empty
Alone and afraid
Only to arrest us for a parade.
I love being a woman
But my heart is in pain,
I find solace in the depths of a woman,
So I know i'll remain...
Petra Dec 2021
I just realized: I am in mourning. I am mourning the loss of my life right now.
A trans man posted that he was mourning the loss of the boyhood that he never had.
I am mourning the loss of a gender-free childhood I never had. I am mourning that I have to cover who I am. I mourn what I could have but don’t. I mourn.
I have lost so much time. For almost a year I have known I am genderqueer, but have kept silent at home. I am mourning what I could have had if the world had been easier; if the world had been kinder, gentler to me. If only the world could show love.
I feel my identity is unloved in my home. I feel it is highly politicized, dehumanized, unreal, not palpable in the air which we all breathe at the dinner table together.
I AM REAL I shout! See me for I am so real. Hear and feel me for my skin is true, my mind is true; I am real and I sit here with you.
I am mourning the loss of a childhood I never had. I mourn the loss of kindness I never had.
Please be kind. I promise I will always be kind.

In my arms, my dear child, you are not a political piece, you are not a distant figure - distant yet still held so closely in my arms and cradled like a child. There will be none of that. You are simply one whom I love, and I am yours in return.
Please love me for who I am. I am only human, I can only take so much.
I don't want to be your figure, I want to be your child. There is such a big difference.
LC Aug 2021
warm, bright words don't reside in your heart.
an ice wall blocks the way as they depart.
a shy, humble smile, "oh, it's no big deal,"
and those words are suddenly forced to kneel.
the icicles ***** your weary shoulders,
forming gashes, leaving you so much colder.

too much warmth? you burst into flames.
too little? you're frozen and maimed.
your hands, scarred and worn,
rub in vain, ready to mourn
as you look over the wall
to stare at the glow that enthralls.
Taylor St Onge Jun 2021
I’m in the dream again:                not the one I had while awake in
the catacombs of St. Callixtus in Rome.  Where the darkness was
so impenetrable that it began to echo.  To look like the mixture of colors
that burst when you rub your eyes too hard for too long.  Like the
neuron rupture before death.  To shape and morph and become liquid.
Where the darkness cobbled itself into a physical form.

Not the dream where                    I kept seeing
flits of my mother out of the corner of my eye.  Behind
                                                                ­                               every street corner.
                                                                ­                   Every turn.  Every tunnel.  
      Reflected in the casts of the bodies in Pompeii.
Mirrored in the waves of the Trevi Fountain.

I’m in the dream where          the soil churned from the bottom to the top.  
                               where          the hand outstretched from the grave.  
                               where          my grandfather clawed his way out and returned to my grandmother﹘sopping wet, covered in thick mud, socks torn, skin sallow and jaundiced, spitting out the wire the embalmers put in his mouth, melting makeup, and ravenously hungry.  And it’s been so
                                                                ­                   long since he was hungry.  

“He came back to me, Taylor,” my grandmother tells me. 
“He came back to me.”
                                        I don’t have the heart to tell her that he’s undead.  
                                        I’m physically unable to spit out those words.
And it’s a dream and it’s a dream and it’s a dream,                   but
it just fits so perfectly.  That he would come back to her.  
That death would not be a barrier.  I can’t explain it.                It just is.  
My grandmother is a shell without him.  
The body that’s missing the limb.  
The body that keeps score.
write your grief prompt 10: amorphous prompt
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