Grief by Venessa
It’s strange how you can stare the inevitable in the eye
And feel both so much and nothing at all
Death has never touched you.
You’ve never learned to grieve
You can watch people fall to pieces in the face of death and feel so detached, you wonder if there’s anything human in you at all
Death has never touched you, but now it rears its head, and you think, how beautiful
How poetic.
Because you’ve never learned to grieve
You fear death and yet, sometimes you crave it.
You fear death not for the unknown, but for the things you have yet to do.
You fear the death that comes on the swift wings of suddenness, the unplanned.
You fear death but you have never learned to grieve it.
“‘Grief’ is a poem that I wrote shortly after losing my grandmother. I was overseas when I got the news and did not have the chance to fly back to see her one last time, and grief is a musing of how empty I felt, and a contemplation of how little death has affected my life personally. I trashed the piece because I did not think it would be easy to relate to, as most people who have lost people to death react with more grief, and more pain, rather than quiet contemplation and musings.”
Venessa is a dreamer and a writer who does her best thinking in the shower or floating in the pool. Her work has been published in For Page and Screen. Having completed a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing, she has learned the value of experimentation. Her writing does its best to defy the boundaries of genre, flitting between poetry and prose, lyrical essays and song. When she is not writing (a difficult task indeed), Venessa can be found at the piano singing, crocheting, napping or on Twitter @VOlympianlove.