I don’t have the words for grief
Yeah, I don’t know. This wasn’t what I originally planned on writing this week, but there are a lot of things I didn’t plan on.
Dumplin’. Photo by me.
“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break. ”
We only had Dumplin’ for about a month, but it became painfully obvious near the end that our apartment was not a good fit for her. She was too anxious, too overstimulated, and everything and anything could set her off. It got to the point where we were in tears nearly every night, while she howled, barked, or bit at us for hours at a time.
Despite this, for whatever reason, we loved her. We loved her so much, I feel like I’m dying without her, like my chest is split open and my throat perpetually closing in on itself. Every poem I write is about her, every sentence sounds like her name, and it’s stupid because she is a dog, and we only had her for a month, and how do you fall in love with anything after that short a time?
No answers here, but our apartment is deafeningly quiet now.
Unfortunately as well, I’ve fallen off my writing track. I didn’t write a single poem last week, and it’s not going to be an easy task to make up that loss. I wrote a poem yesterday that was about Dumplin’, and I don’t think I can keep doing that hah.
But what is it about grief that silences us? I wrote a post a few weeks ago about writing through the slumps (typically depression), but what is different about grief and loss?
It’s hard to say. When I go through one of my bad spells, it’s hard to locate a reason for why it’s happening. I don’t always have an obvious trigger, let’s say. But when I stare at a blank page, all I can feel is this aching loss. And I want to distract myself from it. I want to watch TV or play on my phone, or just generally do anything else, anything but think and bleed out what I’m feeling.
Perhaps that’s why it’s so hard, and why I’m so behind now.
Maybe it’s also because I write next to a window, and there are people walking their dogs, and how can I exist in this world, leaving behind something I loved so much?
Guilt, the guilt, fuck.
Perhaps this is stupid. Dumplin’ is alive and well, back in a shelter that lets us check in on her to make sure she’s settling okay, that lets us get in contact with her new owners eventually when she finds her forever home, but it kills me everyday that it couldn’t be us. And this post is veering to a place I didn’t plan, but I can’t always plan it right.
I don’t know, folks. What makes it easier? Time? Writing about it? You tell me. I write about grief and trauma and loss all the time, but this feels different.
Please drop some advice. Or anything. I guess just let me know you’re listening. And that we’re not alone.
Thirty Minutes
I have written three poems today, and none
sound like the noise I am trying to swallow,
that sits in my mouth like southern cotton, that
plays piano on the grooves of my back teeth, and
there is poetry that sounds like love, and poetry
that sounds like war, and I am usually the latter.
We are waiting for nuclear holocaust. Every day
ticks closer to the end, to ash-flamed tongue and
teeth, to a silence that goes down easier than sugar
sweet water, and how do I write about love and
sex when we are waiting to be destroyed.
Thirty minutes is all we have.
I wish I could promise snowfall against bricked
buildings and I wish I could promise the world
will be standing in thirty minutes time, but there is
nowhere to go but underground, to slick stoned,
quaking bunkers that sound more like home than
any apartment building ever has.
But I love you and want to fuck on couches and
write about the way you hold the world against
the roof of your mouth, and I want to pen the
obsession I hold against the crook of my elbow, that
knows your face in late-night-early-morning, almost
there, please God, don’t stop, and you are ink and
paper, and war is your hand between my legs, trying
to find the spot to make me erupt.
Thirty minutes is all we have.
And if that were true, I would hold you. Dear
Sand, dear time, dear ticking time bombs that sound
like the noises we make at night, I hope you forgive me
for going too slow-ly, for making waste instead of haste,
for choosing to become dust instead of making war in
bedrooms that smell of cigarette smoke in a city that
has already known nuclear
holocaust.
