my grief is luminous

condolences to those whose heart continues to beat, a collection of poetry

CW: themes of death and grief.
If this feels particularly sensitive today, please feel free to skip this one ♡

my grief is luminous

I hold grief in my body.
I feel it in the way
my bones long for the floor.
I feel it in how my sensitive skin,
resists the cold on the other side of the door.
I feel it in the numb to which I succumb,
so the nightmares can be ignored.
I hold grief in my body like an empty chair,
the one where they sit
no more.

I hold grief in my body.
Because it’s brimming
with salt, longing to fall.
Shattered pieces of rain,
that just want to pour.
The lettuce in my stomach,
from the garden they adored.
I hold grief in my body
like an empty bed,
the one they don’t sleep in anymore.

I’m thrown into
the dark lake of fear
I’ve always seen
at the corner of my eye,
and told,
swim you have no choice.

My worst fears have come true
and now I’m swimming
in the navy waters of losing
someone I love.

My mind plays tricks
and so I play games on my phone,
just to distract myself
from the pain.

I snap out of the routine,
and realise where I am,
that I’m living a life.
I can’t breathe
because it’s fragile
and time is passing by.

I long for the mundane,
that I usually disdain.
Muscles weeping, shivering.
Chest gasping for a new day.

Each fibre a piano string,
only my aching heart can play.

I look to the sky
and it puzzles me.
To see the clouds moving
and the birds flying by.
I swear the world has stopped,
so why does it feel like
it’s slipping through my fingers?
How can it go on with this loss,
when something is missing.

Someone is gone.

There are tears on my toast,
because there is no one here
to eat the bitter vegemite.
Oh what I would do
to put their socks on one more time.
To do the straps on their shoes.
I just want to see them out
in the garden once again,
waiting for the lemon flowers to bloom.

I’m okay.
But then I cry wondering,
if they were scared
as they took their last breath.
Or was it peaceful?
I remember holding them
as they cried months earlier.
Saying they were so afraid to die.
That they didn’t want to leave
me
and my sister,
and my mother.

I cry on my bed
because the days
when I was a child with a dad
are no longer here.
I think surely at some point
they will walk through the door.
That no, they cannot be gone.
They are gone,
and they’re never coming back.
It’s a memory
and that feeling will never exist
in the present again.

I see their photos as a baby,
a teenager,
a young adult,
a husband
and a father.

I see them grow before my eyes
and I realize I’m witnessing
a whole life
and I know that now
it is complete
but also,
way too short.

I’m confronted,
with the transient nature of life,
my own mortality.
That one day I will take my last breath,
and the Earth will continue on without me.

I suddenly notice how much older
my young cousins have gotten,
so damn quickly.

Cellophane distorts my vision,
but the transparency
makes it hard for the outside world
to notice this shiny,
tear-filled wrapping paper
that contains my grief-stricken face.

Let me out so I can breathe again.
Let me laugh again without this
weighted feeling reminding me
that absolutely nothing is okay.

Let me dance without a limp.

I listen to love me two times
on the way home from work
and I tap my hand
on the steering wheel
to the beat.
Then I remember,
how they did
the exact same thing.

Suddenly I can smell the interior of their car.
Where are they right now?
Where have they gone?
It doesn’t make any sense.

I open the fridge,
to cook my favourite meal
pulling out the cherry tomatoes.
For a split second I think
wow I’m surprised dad hasn’t eaten any of these,

and then I remember.

The seedlings in their garden
continue to grow
even though they aren’t here
to tend to them.

Their book is resting,
on the table next to where they would sit
unfinished in my presence. I wonder,
how can a story stop in the middle of a sente-

Hiding is my hobby,
not one has come to seek.
Dressed in tangled bedding
is my playful misery.
My forgotten memories,
are clinging to the windows.
Emptiness impales me,
with regretful tomorrows.

A father’s love
is blisters on your hand
and the cold, hard metal
of monkey bars
against your shins,
as he stays back after school
everyday for a week
to teach you to hang upside down.
Even as the school yard
became empty and the air
became colder,
because all your friends
knew how to
and you didn’t
and you really wanted to learn.

A father’s love
is the superman theme song
he sings as he holds you
up in the air
and flies you around,
saying super girl!

A father’s love
is rainbow ice cream
dripping down the cone,
as you hold his hand
and walk through the shopping mall.
Your favourite grated carrot
and lettuce sandwich
he would always buy you.

A father’s love
is him walking into the lounge room
with a bare, freshly shaven face
after only knowing him
with a big, obnoxious moustache
your whole life.
Because mum was crying,
which made you and your sister cry
and he knew that seeing him
without a moustache
would shock the tears away
and make us laugh.
He was right.

A father’s love
is where he sits with mum
on the wooden bench
at the top of the beach.
The day that we all went with him
down to Ocean Grove to fish,
what we didn’t know at the time
would be the last time
he ever went fishing.
Also the last time
he ever saw me in the water
catching waves.

A father’s love
is phone calls
from his hospital bed,
after he has read
some of your poetry.
Stories about how your poem
reminded him of being a child,
in the deep end of the local pool,
looking up at the sky from underwater.
The way he says,
I’m so proud of you!

A father’s love
is the tiny red kickboxing gloves
you wore when you were five
and learning muay thai,
that he keeps in his gear bag
next to his own gloves,
even when you’re now twenty-nine.
The teddy bear with the hoodie
that says Best Dad Ever
that you bought him in primary school,
that sits on his desk.

A father’s love
is his wide blue eyes
and an open mouth
as he says,
wacka ba doobies!
whenever you hold up something
you’re excited to show him.

A father’s love
is carnations, daffodils, roses and magnolias.
The flowers he orders
at the imaginary flower shop
your sister is shopkeeping.
The imaginary shop you rode to
with him holding you
on the rocking horse
his own father handcrafted.
I never met his father,
and now my children
will never meet mine.

Sometimes I have to embody
the sadness that my body holds.
I have to feel the sharpness
in my stomach,
the tears in my heart
and the pain dripping down myself.
Because grief and love dance together,
hold a part of each other in an embrace.
They crash upon you in unexpected waves.

Sometimes you must accept
that it feels so dark
because it was so incandescent.

Laying on the cold hard floor, with candlelit tears.
Streaks of gold down my cheeks.
I realise that my grief is luminous.
Condolences to those
whose heart continues to beat.

Thank you for reading
and holding
these tender words of mine ♡