Page in my Diary IV by Nurayah Sheikh Nabi. Image Courtesy ArtChowk Gallery
today marks an entire year of living with this half-finished poem:
of phrases hastily scrawled inside notebooks, between efficient
notes from work meetings and to-do lists and recipes for quick, healthy meals;
loss
tucked between the robust, the functional, and the matter-of-fact,
gently coloring the mundane, tinting my everyday.
deficient not in words but in courage, a year spent in terror of
accessing parts of myself best left alone – even
as the wound pulsed angrily, demanding attention.
what does putting pen to paper accomplish, after all,
i would rationalize, with the part of my brain untouched
by grieving, the one that clamps down firmly on unbidden
images of that playful half-frown/half-grin, and tiny hands resting
on my neck with the easy assurance of the perfectly loved.
~Â Hira A
Hira A is a part-time poet, full-time freelancer. She has too many opinions about things that don’t much matter to most.Â
