Grief

You asked me why I hadn't written anything
And I told you I was grieving
You told me that grief was what
The best poems are born out of

But three years ago
Nearly four
It didn't feel like a time to sit and write
Because the only words I could think of were
She's gone. She's gone. She's gone.

Was I to write about a grave covered in flowers?
Because she didn't have one
And even if she did
It would have been to freshly covered for flowers to have time to grow

Was I to write about the loss I felt?
It had only been, what? 24 hours?
I wasn't even past denial
By then

Was I to write about how everyone felt?
The disbelief? The fear? The unbelievable sadness
That filled us all?
How could I when everything that had happened, every word I heard, every face I saw
When it all felt so unreal?

You told me to use my grief to write
To put all my thoughts to words
To make poetry out of it all
But you forgot to see that
This grief had left me so emptied
I couldn't even think straight