GRIEF Poem: GRIEVING, by Bethany Eppley

Have you seen what they do to heal burns?
Grief is like that
Peeling layers of new growth
Exposed, raw flesh
Months of this. Years even.
Joy sterilized,
grafted,
not your own.
The hands that run along the uneven wounds have learned to hurry over the screaming
pushing more than you’d ever be ready for.
It’s worse the second time – once blisters have formed
worse the third time
and so on.
I read somewhere that anticipated pain is harder to bear,
so we flinch.
Then comes the masking –
all is well with closed eyes
the
gritted teeth of self implosion
And we use drugs sometimes
And sometimes oblivion
And we use it all up until we feel nothing
It’s been years by now, we’d hoped for mere months
Still the screaming persists
The hands, rougher in their impatience for you to have at least covered the scar –
The unsightly, oozing lesion
Can you bury it when you know you’ll have to dig it out again?
Shovel to skin, bleeding like it will appease this one little word
The bones of it all read the weapon
and
put it on paper as if that explains anything.

Author: poetryfest

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