Pages

Saturday, September 10, 2016

Another year passes and my grief is still real. A poem.



27 Years Later

Grief is heavy today.
Weighted.
I wrap myself up in it like
Image courtesy of K Whiteford
a blanket
and finger the
fringes,
braiding them with
sadness,
regret, and what-ifs.
I remember the
pain
of long
ago.
The call.
The drive.
The hospital smells,
mostly of burnt blood dripping.
Another braid –
smells,
sights, sounds.
Beeping.

Then the dreaded silence.

I pull the blanket tighter around my aching
chest,
cocooning the pain.
Will it transform into something
beautiful?

Quilted memories.
Patches
of yellow and turquoise and
RED.
The red startles me and I unwrap,
tossing the blanket
into a
heap,
kicking it off to a corner
and reaching for my coffee.
I must not let the morning slip away.
There’s a life to live.

~Hana Haatainen-Caye

©2016
  
In memory of my late husband, Jim Thompson. 5/22/55 - 9/10/89

No comments:

Post a Comment