And Then, There Is Grief

As a writer, I wondered…

Can I create poetry that tore?

What after all, did I know

about pain too pure to bear,

or grief too deep to share?

What did I know?

Indeed!

I looked up the meaning

of words that stood in

for grief.

Distressed, in agony,

desolate, in purgatory, or

drowning in sadness.

Why, one could even be melancholic!

But all mere words that did not…

could not

sum up heart-breaking misery.

Now, I know better.

The words aren’t just on paper.

Tattooed into life,

they flutter on my every breath.

As always, I put pen to paper,

to seize the naked rawness of it all.

And, hit a wall.

Bearing witness to a pain

beyond the reach of medicines.

Words fail to capture

the silent darkness

of private anguish.

All the ink in the world

cannot pen the wretched misery

of this unrelenting story.

Everything is at a standstill

inside of me.

Poised to start living,

Once… Once this happens or that.

Once I wrestle the pain

down on to the page.

Fool!

There is grief

Beyond the reach of meaning.

This poem was written in response to a prompt on my writing group. Walt Witman wrote, ‘I contain multitudes.’ And now our grief is reflecting it too. Layers of grieving. Even as we all struggle with the pandemic, some of us are also fighting parallel, personal battles in our own little pandemic induced bubbles. Nothing will ever be the same again – a cliché but true. We have all lost our innocence, and every day I mourn for what could have been, even as I am grateful for what is. This poem is my attempt at depicting my grief for that loss, because I can begin to manage things, feelings and vague notions only, and only when I write it out.