Grief came through my front door quietly one morning.
This was the first note I wrote down one night when I was struggling to identify the lump in my throat. All day I had grappled with this unidentifiable feeling, this block, and I found myself time and time again trying to choke it down and focus, but nothing I did could shake it. Finally, as I’m sitting in my bedroom late into the evening, the lump dissipates. And I hear it first as a whisper and then again with more confidence and I can finally start to understand what it is that I have been battling all day. Grief. And it wasn’t a surprise. And there was no ah-ha moment – no comfort in locating the emotion. Because in that moment I could realize that it was not my inability to pinpoint my emotions, but rather, my inability to accept them. And so I got rid of the lump…but the grief lingers. This is where my inquiry has lead me – an exploration of grief through the art form that is poetry.
