Fun's over, kids

Friday, friends! I had a soul-fulfilling day, tabling and talking to people about my zines. I hope you are also feeling rejuvenated, somehow.

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt: In his poem, “Goodbye,” Geoffrey Brock describes grief in three short stanzas, the second of which is entirely made up of a rhetorical dialogue. Today, write your own meditation on grief. Try using Brock’s form as the “container” for your poem: a few short stanzas, with a middle section in which a question is repeated with different answers given.

I’m struck daily by the fact that the family members who taught me to love the city I now get to call home are no longer here. I feel so many things about moving forward without them that it’s hard to put on paper, so I appreciate this challenge to do so. This one is for my aunt, who I think of and miss everyday. The world we could be experiencing together feels so much more vivid and real some days than the one where she’s not here.

I would like to try to write another response to this later because I think I could say something more for/to her. But, being that there are no guarantees in this life, I figured I'd go ahead and grace your inboxes for the day.

Thanks for reading <3

Your birthday, again

Life eeks on. In the morning,
butter melting on English muffin.
In the afternoon, move the plant
to the window sill. In the evening,
lie down and dream, early as you can.

If grief is love staying the course,
then, what is the course? A track
circling and circling until the rut
digs. No, what is the course?
The slowly suffering shadow —
sundial’s point, tracing the day.

Emptiness eeks you out. Of the
life but not the daily grind. You
are missing and yet I feel your
voice inside me on the commute
home. The radio plays Jesse’s Girl
and we zip down the road, together.