Grief Is Such a Cruel Turd.
This year, twenty seventeen,
Is among the hardest I’ve ever seen.
The weeks and days
Have been hard on me,
Prior to and including
October twenty three
Because Grief continues
To bare his teeth and bite me.
This I know is not absurd:
Grief is such a cruel turd.
The last few weeks.
Leading up to today.
Have stung my heart.
Shading my world dark and gray.
Grief slithers up to me
With his lips turned down
And he slaps me so hard
I can only cry and frown.
Some years, Grief waits
And crashes in after
To steal all my joy
And squelch all my laughter.
There is no way to avoid him.
He’s integral to life.
And he comes bearing gifts
Meant to reduce my strife.
But his one hand I have to hold
Allowing his other
hand to be so bold
That it will rip from deep within my heart
Those protective layers
That have been my protective slayers
Of unfathomable loneliness and pain.
He rips loose one layer at a time
As if our sons’s death were MY crime.
The first layer he rips loose
is “love no more”,
he tugs and pulls
Making a bloody gore
Of my sanity.
He continues soon after
by ripping “hug no more”
and “see no more”.
It really burns when he rips away
“laughs with no more”
and” touch no more.”
My tears flow as I cry
And wonder why
Must I
have to sit with Grief
Through all these years?
Haven’t I shed
More than enough tears?
Grief is such a cruel turd
I feel it is so absurd
That life is this way.
But now I’m able
That I know
I can be with other vilomahs*
Who’ve lost their glow.
And our painful stories we can share
Because we’ve learned how to care
In this most difficult way.
So now, all I can say
Is, "Grief is such a cruel turd."
*A viloma is a bereaved parent. I means: out of the natural flow, or out of the natural order.
