I Tremble - Poetic Musing on Grief

I Tremble

I can’t.

When you left I said

I can’t.

And I still tremble when I hear your name.

The act of living

Is just an act

When a limb has been severed

Or when an eye has been

Made blind.

I can’t.

I said

I can’t.

But I did, for years and years

They cascaded down my invisible face,

Invisible tears.

Tears I hid,

First from me,

And then from every one of

You.

A collective you.

A global you.

A people bled of suffering, too.

This is my cut, my wound, my sorrow

Where I wake up in my own horror

And spill it back to

A reasonable place.

I boxed it.

Yes. I boxed it up and left

And didn’t leave a trace.

I went on living as though

I could.

I did.

I am.

I will.

I can.

But when I hear your name

I tremble.

Janelle Gregory

This poem was penned in response to deep, unexpected, unexplainable loss. Not just one, but a series of losses that threatened my equialibrium and endurance. If possible, I too, as Christ was said to have done, would have shed tears of blood.

Grief takes on many shapes and magnitude. When faced with inexplicable grief, the heart rebels, retreats and denies at different places in this very lonely process.

My response was to withdraw from the world to lick my wounds. I picked up my pen, my typewriter, paper and my love became this act of placing words in order. Poetry often resulted. It was never my intention. It was opening a vein.

Much of which even I struggled to absorb. It was (and still can be) raw emotion. Feelings that I could not, or would not express, for fear of the import.

I have never been one to give way to tears. I was schooled very young to never allow myself to demonstrate vulnerability, because to do so made me a target.

At one point I could not cry, or allow myself to feel the pain. I was unprepared for the maelstrom it would produce if I opened Pandora's box.

I feared the possibility of coming unglued.

Poetry, writing, became my counselor. I wrote what I was afraid to say to any living soul.

I don't pretend to know poetic form, or proper structure. I simply wrote.

Part of my healing I attribute to the written word. Writing is recommended by professionals as a way to work through emotion and to enable a person to make decisions and come to self acceptance.

I can't advise anyone in how to overcome deep sorrows or loss. I can only share the life preserver writing has represented to me.

I hope you, too, stumble upon your own path to healing if, or when, a tragedy strikes in your life.

Let your heart guide you. Is it words, music, art or mountain climbing? Pursue that.

The road to healing is intensely personal. To love is to risk pain, to heal means to gain a heart more empathetic to the suffering of others.

Thank you for reading

Love and peace to all.

This post is an entry in the weekly contest by @sammosk, #creativebot.

Photo taken with my MotoX PureEdition