Recipes for Grief

[yachiru]

Title: Recipes for Grief
Prompt: Without You
TW: Death


I don't want to write about grief anymore

I don't want to write about how it fits like an old jacket
that I keep having to patch the elbows on
how every year the shoulders tighten
buttons fall in the same patterns as falling leaves
from old bark trees
we used to make angels under

I don't want to write about all of the women dying in winter
my grandmother and mother gifting me Christmas ashes
how they sold her underwear in yellow plastic tubs
how her jewelry rubbed green
how she never got the funeral she wanted
gilded and grand

I don’t want to write about how I killed a mouse once
after its foot was caught in a snaptrap
how it woke me at three in the morning
frantic death squeaks all trapped creatures must make

I don't want to say that it made me remember my mother dying
on that dialysis machine
tubes pumping her veins clean
though never enough to counteract weeks of sin

There must be a recipe
for grief
something like tea using dust instead of leaf
filter through sleep
steep in water
let it wash me clean

Comments

[chasing_silver]

That last stanza, and the pain in this. Gorgeous.

[pixiebelle]

I could feel the pain behind this piece. And the mouse reminding you of your mother, I can relate to that.

[fausts_dream]

This is poignant, you can really write.

[drippedonpaper]

Wow.

This made me cry.

I don't want to write of grief...but I love how you used that line to..write of grief. Very clever but also so sad.

Grief is made of all the little moments.

Hugs to you.

[mollywheezy]

I really relate to the sound of a mouse caught in a trap. Such a horrible noise! Watching someone you love die is even harder.

[muchtooarrogant]

I really liked your last stanza, particularly the final line, "let it wash me clean"

Thank you for sharing a poem on such a difficult subject, it was very well written.

Dan

[erulissedances]

Your final stanza is epic. There's no cure for grief except time, and She works at her own pace.

- Erulisse (one L)

[tonithegreat]

Damn. Without you, indeed.

[roina_arwen]

That last stanza… wow.

[halfshellvenus]

These snapshots of grief and loss are vivid and evocative. I'm sorry things have been so rough. :(

[n3m3sis43]

This is so beautiful. Sitting with you in your grief.

[rayaso]

You managed to turn your grief into a really wonderful piece of writing. I especially liked the first stanza - the image of the old jacket is fantastic!

[tigrkittn]

This is so vivid and lovely, if grief can be described as lovely. Thank you for sharing it with us.

[hafnia]

This is really poignant and lovely. ♥

[adoptedwriter]

Oh gosh! (in a good way because this was so exquisitely expressed!)

[xeena]

This is wonderful and so very true of how grief feels.

[murielle]

Beautiful. Tragic.

"I don't want to write about all of the women dying in winter
my grandmother and mother gifting me Christmas ashes"

Gorgeous.

❤❤❤

[unmowngrass]

oh wow

[alycewilson]

This is so well done. It's one of those poems that's going to sneak into my brain crevices and come out randomly.