And then, there is grief

As a writer, I wondered…

Can I create poetry that tore?

What after all, did I know

about pain too pure to bear,

or grief too deep to share?

What did I know?

Indeed!

I looked up the meaning

of words that stood in

for grief.

Distressed, in agony,

desolate, in purgatory, or

drowning in sadness.

Why, one could even be melancholic!

But all mere words that did not…

could not

sum up heart-breaking misery.

Picture by Michael Held on Unsplash

Now, I know better.

The words aren’t just on paper.

Tattooed into life,

they flutter on my every breath.

As always, I put pen to paper,

to seize the naked rawness of it all.

And, hit a wall.

Bearing witness to a pain

beyond the reach of medicines.

Words fail to capture

the silent darkness

of private anguish.

All the ink in the world

cannot pen the wretched misery

of this unrelenting story.

Everything is at a standstill

inside of me.

Poised to start living,

Once… Once this happens or that.

Once I wrestle the pain

down on to the page.

Fool!

There is grief

Beyond the reach of meaning.

---

This poem was written in response to a prompt on my writing group. Walt Witman wrote, ‘I contain multitudes.’ And now our grief is reflecting it too. Layers of grieving. Even as we all struggle with the pandemic, some of us are also fighting parallel, personal battles in our own little pandemic induced bubbles. Nothing will ever be the same again – a cliché but true. We have all lost our innocence, and every day I mourn for what could have been, even as I am grateful for what is. This poem is my attempt at depicting my grief for that loss, because I can begin to manage things, feelings and vague notions only, and only when I write it out.

On a side note – My writing has suffered greatly this last week, and for that I blame a friend who spoke highly about The Wheel of Time series on my writing group. The only other book I had read in the fantasy genre was Lord of the Rings. I ended up buying The Eye of the World, the first book in the TWOT series, and spent the first 100 odd pages comparing it to LOTR. Between pages 100 and 150, I lost myself completely in the story, and finished the rest of it at a gallop.

But now I realise I have 14 more books to read!! Damn it. My to-be-read pile of books is ridiculously high as is, but they will all have to wait now. Worse, I have to remind myself to take time out to write! All on top of the nitty gritty businesses of daily life. And more precious time is going to be eaten up by the TWOT series when it shows on Netflix. I should have started this newsletter after I had finished reading the entire series :). Of course, as far as problems go, this is a good problem to have!

On a side, side note: I don’t know how or why I did not come across TWOT series earlier!! The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills. I had to say that.:)