Sleepless Night Poetry

HOLLOWED GRIEF

She's been gone over 10 years now
but it still barrels through me
at times
leaving my heart aching
with the memory
Of that impossible feeling
when something irrevocable and unfathomable happens
and your body falls away
into that no-place
There, but removed somehow
and your heart, your gut are left hanging
abandoned
Suddenly Orphaned
so incredibly heavy
dripping tiny broken pieces
and all you can feel is
searing pain
A cold black fire
Of absence
She's gone.

Harry Ally

Figure No. 63

charcoal & conte on paper    30 x 22

Then a wave breaks
punching into the impossible feeling
And another wave
shoves against my set-aside body
Waves waking
over and over
Until a final
More gentle
Wave
Washes the cold-laden
Singed
Quivering
Pain
Into place
Inside me
a wail is sucked out of me
As the last wave
Hollows me out in retreat
Leaving a trembling thing
Where my heart used to be
Sobs throb out of me
with each incongruous Squeeze
of the involuntary muscle
Until I am pumped dry
Mind exhausted
Fall
Into the refuge of sleep

Empathy

I'm at a book signing. One of my most favorite authors! I'm early and just waiting. I just read on her Facebook page that her mother passed a little over a month ago. And a fresh grief washes over me. I'm seriously fighting back tears. I'm not sure if it is truly empathy or just the reminder making me want to go hide in a bathroom stall and cry. I want to hug her when I see her. Tell her how very sorry I am. How we are now sister orphans. But I don't want to make her cry. Or embarrass her. So I take deep breaths. One after another. I wonder if anyone else sitting here knows. I don't think so. Most of the chairs are filled with women. Some noisily chatting in clutches. Oblivious. Completely unaware how her world fell away from her in separation mere weeks ago. And how she is bobbing along in the surf of life. So, that is how I felt. And sometimes still do.  And how I can only imagine she might feel.