echo The first time I alluded to grief
it felt as if I came in contact with myself––somewhat alarming
voices of my mother drowned in floods,
survivors of the water antagonising survival.
In grief, I learned that poets don’t need gems
to carve memories into
we need only to whisk elegiac scribbles onto pulps
but I don’t enjoy spilling my grievous fates on papers
they become wet and tear.
And they tear me, too.
Instead, I engrave them in my heart,
in where salt and wind can’t touch.
barely breathing––as the memories depend on my stone ocean for longevity.
Now, this heart, this house
is a picturesque of nightmares I collected in the dark.
Now, I can say all daughters are shaped from conflict;
wars fought by armed forces who know nothing of victory.
My gems are far gone, and it seems
my memories are deep in dormancy;
Maybe they are misplaced while hoping to reunite
as a family that never was.
In these days where the clouds gather,
days where twittering birds don’t fly,
I wear solitude like a suit––they say it’s oversized, decrepit.
It’s hard,
don’t say I’m not trying to look stunning
in an abundance of loneliness.
Yesterday, I found myself torn between memoire antiques
and finding a way to quit this search for what I cannot recreate.
I wake, bereft of emotion like the air losing the eternal soul of a cloud
as the day continues to develop its endless narrative.
Written By: Madeline
