TRAGIC Poem: GRIEF, by Estelle Bardot

I keep putting off writing this,
knowing that if I do,
I have to sit uncomfortably
with the memories of you,
and ponder what more could have been
than what had already been of you.

The very thought of thinking about you
distresses me to my bones.

It’s not that you don’t cross my mind at all.
I think of you every day,
but I don’t think about you.

I must confess I haven’t
gone to great measures to do so.
It didn’t take avoidance, or repression.

It’s not that I’m indifferent, I tell myself,
Or else I wouldn’t be writing this.

But I can’t bring myself to face…
you, them, it –
I shan’t call it grief,
for that is decidedly not
what I am experiencing,
(and yes, I know that not all who grieve
are necessarily engulfed in sorrow) —
whatever this is, then,
head on.
Cowardly, I know.

Even now I feel trapped,
my mind walling in
on whatever this is I unlocked within myself,
things I had begun to think I had imagined
burying within me in the first place.
Surely whatever remains still lurked
have long evaporated into dust?

I do have an escape.
Except now, I cannot draw myself away.
The beginning is always binding, they say.

Akin to hypnosis,
inevitably, I am spiralling,
just like I knew I would,
and am thinking of you more deeply
than just a scratch on the surface.

I hate that.
Both the thought that when I think of you,
I think of you only fleetingly,
because you deserve more,
your memory is worthy of more attention –
and the thought that I am sinking now.

I do not not grieve because I fear
that behind the walls I built
there is an unstoppable force of mourning
that, should I consent to dams the being broken,
would drown me.

I do not grieve because I fear
that behind the walls I built
there is nothing.

Also accepted for publication at:

https://alternateroute.org/
Fall Issue of 2024.