It isn’t easy to not know what to say
When questions are not in formula
Answers don’t easily come out.
How are you?
Isn’t answered by busy.
Staying busy as opposed to?
Busy is what you are doing.
How are you asked
How is your being?
Are you okay?
Okay so often has a silent preface
Can you hear it?
I am (not) okay.
But we happily skip past
Okay is easy, neutral, bye
When the answer has the ‘not’
or the “I am having a hard time”
Can you be present and wordless?
Can you be a listener and still?
Can you help me hold and acknowledge
This pain, grief and hurt?
You don’t have to be comfortable.
you shouldn’t be, I”m not.
This hurts. It sucks. It’s raw. Ugly.
It’s confused and it’s unsure
My ‘being strong’ is a facade,
It is a shield for your comfort.
It feels so lonely, and unfaithful
To want so badly what can’t be given
Won’t be given. Either way.
Falling apart isn’t an option
Strength required and needed.
Salty tears burn quietly
Polite acknowledgement of
your distance grants a pass.
I won’t stop asking after your heart.
I won’t stop brushing past the busy and okay
I know how that (not) feels and
I honour it with my concern.
“Thoughts and prayers” are good
But are no replacement for
being present, being there.
It’s not easy, never said it was.
If it’s hard for you to be here,
imagine if you will
How I’d love to be anywhere but.
And can’t. Won’t. Because
Someone needs me more.
I wish I was strong enough
to shake you free from your
safety and your platitudes
But I don’t have the energy or the will
When I am slow to come back,
understand the miles I’m walking alone
I don’t blame you, but I miss the idea that you’d
be there as I’d try to be for you.
How long can you stay in a stage of grief? How much preparation can you imagine and still not be ready? Grief isn’t a line, or a road, It’s a twisted scribble full of traps and triggers. It may get straighter, or so they say. All I know is that as hard as it is for you to be there for me, it’s harder to be alone in the middle of it.
Sunflower Poetry 