seven.
This newsletter is here to connect you to your five senses and your grief at times when life and death make no sense. Consider it an imperfect “grounding exercise” for the month.
I wrote a poem a day, every day, for a year after my mom died. Some were short, some were long, none were very good, not at first.
The early poems were florid and coded in metaphor. Language like grief was too big to be reduced, it was amorphous and lacked punctuation.
The middle poems avoided pinning emotion to a single word. Grief was not precise, neither was my prose, but I began using line breaks and built in rhythm. These poems wound and unwound themselves, irresolute to being solved.
The last poems started a story. The most was said with the least. I showed more and hid less. I was more at ease with grief’s unknowable aspects, more at peace with mess, more understanding of confrontation.
At the end of the year I read the poems. I read them in order, then returned to edit some. I kept the originals, but as I edited past poems, a second process began. One that gave me the creative choice of what to show, what to make beautiful, what to expose more of, what to remember and forget.
A year is a long time. This year, when my friend died, I started writing a poem on the third of every month. In those poems I see her face. I smell the white flowers she wore in her hair. I taste the first time we bought vodka with an older girl’s ID. I hear her voice and hear her dreams. I grieve the end of a story.
• YOUR HAIR •
AS GIRLS WE’D TAKE TURNS
BRUSHING THE FLAXEN STRANDS STILL WARM
FROM SUN.
BRAIDING AND UNBRAIDING LIKE
DAYS COME AND GO.
WE’D LAUGH ABOUT IT
AS ADULTS.
HOW I FAITHFULLY SAT DOWN
AND UNTANGLED STRAND BY STRAND,
BOTH AGAINST MY WILL
AND COMPELLED.
I DID IT WHEN YOU WERE DYING,
BRAIDED AGAIN.
MORE GENTLY THAN BEFORE.
I BRAIDED AND UNBRAIDED,
MY HANDS MOVING IN THE SHADOW OF PRECIOUS HABIT
TURNING THE SUNLIT STRANDS
BINDING NIGHT TO DAY,
AFTER TO EARTH.
FEEL - Driftless
Rarely do you see the whole picture in this poetic short. Instead, images come and go, incomplete but ripe with suggestion of what is and questions of what was.
SEE - Ten Skies
For those that cannot go outside and gaze. A small reset.
SMELL - The Smell of Loss
Scent memories are intimate, often inexpressible but deeply felt. My mom wore a perfume with a maroon bottle, but the smell of it on her skin I fail to describe. To remember them is to distill an embrace, to distill being close.
HEAR - Javelin // Sufjan Stevens
Written after the passing of a partner, this album speaks to grief’s doubt, despair, hope, and hungry heart.
TASTE - On Grief and Pizza
Pizza’s unfussy comfort and reliable companionship is reaffirmed by this essay.
GRIEF - Sister Life
A “Sister Life” is a life you could have had or narrowly avoided after a turning point. Maybe you made a big decision that altered your course. Maybe something happened to you that was beyond your control and it changed your story.
Joan Wong asked friends to share stories of what might have been, and made accompanying illustrations for each story.
All grievers know the hard, unanswerable questions framed by “what ifs?” or “should haves.” Sometimes they hurt, sometimes they harm, sometimes they heal.