lost and alone

For today’s prompt, write a lone poem. Perhaps the poem is about a solitary wanderer or person who just prefers to go it alone. Or a lone winner, lone wolf, or some other solo individual. Or alternatively, I’ll accept poems that are about loans or that are about being alone. — Robert Lee Brewer, Writer’s Digest

Lone

Bereavement is a solitary world
No one else is living your life
— even those who mourn the same loss

Some respond according to norms
While some are outliers
Some grieve ‘properly,’
and some are shunned
because their mourning makes other people uncomfortable.

Maybe you cry too much.
Say their name too much,
talk openly about what happened.
Don’t manage to ‘move on’ at an acceptable speed.
Continue to rage and rail.

Maybe you fail to return
to being the same person you were before
— how dare you not bounce back
from your whole life imploding?

People have been dying
since people have been.
Why are we so terrible at this?

How can we undergo an experience
that has happened or will happen
to every single person who ever has lived
— the loss of a loved one —
and still be alone?

april is national poetry month

April is National Poetry Month. I’ve decided to try writing a poem a day using prompts from Writer’s Digest. If all goes well, I’ll share them here daily. If they’re too private (or unsuccessful — I think there was one poem last year I never did get to “work”), maybe not. The first prompt was to craft a morning/mourning poem.

Mourning Poem

Morning comes too early
my body says it's time to wake up.
Awake and waiting
I debate whether
to look at my watch.

I resist but usually in vain.
Like it or not, it's another day

That unfurls itself ahead of me
full of opportunities and demands.
Mostly I rise to them
not always cheerfully.

Faced with a fog, I fight against it
clouds my ambition
obscures my vision
makes it feel dangerous to go too far afield.

Every morning I wake up and
realize my loss anew.
Somehow the world
keeps spinning without you

And the time you were here
recedes farther and farther
into the past.
My mind can't make sense of how
that can be.

Morning to night,
it's always the same

seconds, minutes, hours, days

weeks, months

years tick by without you.

And every day,
another morning comes.

Too early.