Statutory warning!
Everything I’ve ever felt
I’m about to turn it into poetry
Because I don’t know where else to go
With all my misery
Dear reader,
welcome
I’m about to make you uncomfortable
As I speak about my dead person
But hey
I gave you a fair warning
Before letting you read my diary of grief
Where I unburden
I hope you’re able to read through the pale crusty sheet
This faded charcoal ink is my earliest memory as a bereaved
There was hope
Hope in my grief
For you had only gone
Gone for a week
Was it another work meeting
or a conference you were invited to speak?
I guess I didn’t realise
your absence didn’t guarantee a return this time
and now at the dining table
there is always an empty seat.
My grief might be pain
But it’s made out of anger
Because every time I try a new coffee,
I know I can’t share it with you
Every time I watch a new murder mystery,
I know I can’t share it with you
But sometimes I read a book so divine,
I forget I can’t share it with you.
I spend more time thinking about what you must be thinking
And if there really is an afterlife that you’re living
And if you can look over me in death
I hope you don’t see me yearning
with the preposterous will
to reverse time,
battle fate
or even find a cure to death.
Dear reader,
If you’ve still stuck around
We’re almost at the end of my diary
For grief has even exhausted the words out of me
I hope the depth of my despair plunged into your heart
I hope you flinched and wished to stop to read
every time I said the words death, grief and bereaved
I hope you felt helpless and uneasy, just like me
I guess grief also turned me evil; a sardonic casualty
But wait, before you depart
Let me sign off with one last remark
Somedays I just want to talk to my father
There is no victory to celebrate, no sorrow to share
I just had a day, and I want to call my father
And I miss the sound of my own voice screaming ‘papa’
and I miss the sound of a familiar voice answering to that call
And whoever said three’s a crowd,
they couldn’t have been more wrong.
For three is an empty house.