Anger
What is anger?
The conflicting stories
and silences?
The moments blocked?
What is anger?
The empty spaces
where I turn away,
wanting?
What is anger?
Is it this anticipation of loss:
the burnt-out remnants
of old miseries?
***
Grief
What is grief? Stumbling by haunted spaces
and turning away from your empty chair?
What is grief? The evening silences scratching
the scabs of your amputation from me?
Sackcloth and ashes pool behind my empty eyes
imprinting memories where your smile fades
Where is the garden you have abandoned?
What song is playing as you pull away?
Bleakly I walk and walk on muddied paths.
My stories now lost; their endings destroyed.
All sunsets are grey; all voices not yours.
There’s nothing I want and nowhere to be.
Then comes my scalding tears in their scarring tracks:
a slow stinging that solaces me in this deadened time.
Learning Living 