Unspoken

Grief that dare not speak its name

Lies buried marrow deep in bones

Now grown brittle

From lack of comfort

Empathy

Recognition

Love

Stones thrown in a pond

Send ripples of contraction

Throughout the ocean pulses

That travel your spine

As your heart beats in stops and start

Leaving you straining for breath

As nausea comes unbidden

Seeping like gas all through

The tissues of your organs

When we speak

I sense this ache of deepest emptiness

All the words you dare not say

Hovering here around us

In the silence

And I am sad

So very sad

Feeling the weight of all that is unspoken

In your heart

It may be many years ago

This deepest lost

But at this time of year

Deep shadows grow

And I feel your haunting

As spectral shadows gather

Ane we inch our way towards

Your birthday

And

All soul’s night

I wish I could tell this grief

To speak

And yet it is wordless

There is no cure

For pain that lies buried

Denying us access to

Both

Open grieving and beauty

Connection too

And our souls and bodies are

All the poorer for loss

That

Reverberates

Wishing to become known

Instead there is

Only this silence

Containing deep within it

The grief that dare not speak its name.

 

(I wrote this poem for my mother in early November, six weeks before she died.)