Tag Grief

Transient

freyathewriter 27 Comments 
How can you prove something didn't happen
when the only witness is you?

When you’re the one curled up on the hexagoned floor
watching the blood seep through

the cotton weave of your favourite skirt
the one that caressed the slight mound

of your stomach, the one you’d hidden
for all those years, flattening it with

girdle pants to be just like the girls
with concave femininity, the ones

who glanced sideways at your tree trunk thighs
sneering as they passed you by

tree trunk thighs with muscles of water
as you scrabble around on the bathroom floor

scooping up blood rivulets in shaking fingers
drawing faces in the most intimate places

imagining eyes of an unavailable daughter
laughter of a boy running towards you

and your arms ache, your stomach burns
your heart expands and the lesson you learn

as your defective womb leaks all over the floor
is: this isn’t for you, it’s too late and too soon

for the world to welcome another like you

Over at dVerse Open Link Night, we are invited by our congenial host Grace to share a poem in response to the prompt she has set, or something else entirely. This week, I have decided to go for something else.

If you would like to take part and also have the opportunity to read other poets’ work, please click on the link, read the post and dive on in!

(Image by Jean Marc Pampuch at Pexels).

Incendiary

freyathewriter 20 Comments 
I have nothing left
and so I am consumed
incendiary
for the mother whose fire is extinguished
for the father who is mere ashes
for the child

for the child

I protest
I have nothing left
you will burn with me
and you will listen

Tonight the dVerse Poets Pub is kindly hosted by Punam for Quadrille Monday, where she invites us to write a quadrille of 44 words on the them of ‘protest’.

I will let the poem speak for itself.

(Image credit: Michael Noel, via Pexels).

Cicatrix – Sunday Mini Challenge – Real Toads

freyathewriter 19 Comments

DSC_0002

The image of you has softened over time
I see you, prostrate, as if through film star soft-focus
Still, at last, still, forever
and yet if I push myself through that ghost-laden portal
I know that you have taken on a different form
you are transformed into no more than

Ash

Dispersed on the winds
I breathe you in
You become part of me in more than the accepted ways, Dad
Your death doesn’t hurt in the way it once did
No longer lacerates, no longer eviscerates

Stigmata

But I am left behind
But I am in sorrow for the missed opportunities
But I am swallowed by regret that I
can never have that conversation
Never explain that I understand you better

Never confess that I judged you too harshly

Never reveal that there is so much more of you in me

than I ever cared to admit or wanted then

Never tell you that I welcome that

Now

But, at least, the knife-edge cicatrix
of the loss of you has faded
I can smile at the thought of you
because I think of you

Often

 

This was inspired by the prompt found over at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, where we are encouraged to write about something that is both harrowing, and hallowed. A challenging prompt, for sure, but it helps to write about these things, to transfer the ever-whirling thoughts to print, at least for a while.

Why not pop on over to the Real Toads blog, and take a look, take part?