GRIEF Poem: Grief is Like Learning French, by Zachary Holt

Pourquoi, mon ami?

Because I don’t speak
it well enough.
Crying into my textbook
because I know I’m going to fail
my oral exam tomorrow, reminds me
of how I cried into my cousin’s
open coffin.

He killed himself.

And I think about how
the letter ‘r’ is jagged
and gets caught
in the back of my throat like a tack,
clogging my air on its way out.
Locking the French in my mind and
keeping me from ever speaking at all.

Pas d’anglais.

Pas de français.

Pas de langue.

I sleep, and in my dream
I try to loosen
the bloodied chain slicing
into my neck on all sides, but I can’t
reach my arms above my waist.
They are tied down by the weight
of my dead. By the weight
of language—or lack thereof.

Demander de l’aide.

I wish I could but the words
are too heavy for me to spit
out. They burn holes
in my throat,
in my heart,
in my brain.

And Madame Bowley only allows
French in class so I can’t even begin
to ask for some extra time or
help because I don’t know how
to say any of that. I don’t know how to
tell her that I found my father dead
a while back, or that my cousin shot
himself in the head a few Tuesdays ago,
because the past tense is too advanced