Poem: The Body of Grief

They say grief lives in the body, and I believe them…

Some days it sits in my chest. Other days it settles into my shoulders, my jaw, my stomach. Sometimes it arrives without warning & catches my off guard like missing a step or stubbing a toe. Sometimes, grief and tenderness are cloaked in:

A song.

A smell.

A pissy mood in the morning.

A version of myself that I thought I’d outgrown.

Lately, instead of trying to outrun my feelings, I’ve been making poems. It’s been good to return to poetry. I started my career as a poet back in 2013. Writing this piece felt like a return to self in a beautiful way.

After writing & touring for my latest book, I realized I needed to find my words & self in a different way.

So, I’ve been recording voice notes. Writing poems without editing. Capturing feelings before my mind has a chance to explain (or shoo) them away. There’s something deeply freeing about making things simply because they want to be made. No outcome or expectations—just the will to create a soft place for your raw truth to land.

I’ve realized that creating doesn’t [always] erase grief or [immediately] produce joy. It does, however, seem to give both somewhere to go. On my sad days and my joyful ones, creating something shows me that even in the heaviness there is still light.

If you’re carrying grief right now, this is for you.

You do not have to rush back to the life you had before. You don’t have to piece together your broken heart today. You do not have to perform your healing or okay’ness. You do not have to convince anyone or anything.

You are allowed to be. You’re allowed to be sad. You’re allowed to be over it. You are allowed to miss what was, grieve what could have been, and still believe that tomorrow may be lighter than today, when you’re ready.

Sometimes surviving life’s hardest seasons looks less like finding answers and more like making room for your own humanity.

Maybe that’s enough for now…or for however long it needs to be.

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TCWK

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