The Grief Cycle
Or, A Poetry Collection on the Five Stages of Loss
Denial
Stage One
The rocking chair creaks as you sway back and forth. The wind chimes ring like a church hymn chorused by the choir, commemorating the dead. Your hand reaches for his, only to graze bony fingers that disintegrate into ash. You gather a pile in your palm and place it next to you, pretending he’s there while tapping your foot like a pianist. You watch the sky turn peach while plucking daisy petals, repeating, He loved me, he loved me not, with the same imprint, the one you hope for, always on the last petal: He loved me.
Anger
Stage Two
Curling your fists into tight balls of fury, you slam your knuckles against the concrete, enraged by Satan’s wrath, struck by Zeus’ bolt, electrifying your amygdala and bulging your veins like water canals irrigating your temper, soaking the land in gasoline and dropping a match, feasting your eyes on the grass set ablaze.
Bargaining
Stage Three
The car dealer stares at you with empty eye sockets, scratching his skeletal temple with the scythe used to reap your beloved's soul. You stare back at him, losing yourself in the abyss as leaden as the coffin buried six feet under. You wonder, What is the price for life? So, you hand over your eyes for headlights, your lungs for a steering wheel, your ears for rearview mirrors, your heart for the engine. His laugh, piercing like a rosebush thorn, says it all: trading a used automobile for another used automobile is no bargain. So, you pull out a gold coin and slip it into the slot machine, pulling the lever and watching the parade of colors before three apples appear on the screen with the seeds spilled out like raisins and you realize your luck has shrunken to the size of a maggot feasting on a slab of ribs, and the poison tears at your throat, opening wide like a circus tent welcoming in the crowd, the eager crowd awaiting your act, the act in which your heartless body tugs an organic car with a rope between your teeth.
Depression
Stage Four
Your bloodshot eyes crust around the edges, sticking your eyelashes together like glue, freed only by the flood that slithers down your cheek and plummets into the bath water where your weightless body, a knockoff Noah’s Ark, struggles to stay afloat amidst the rough waters.
Acceptance
Stage Five
The taste of salt swirls on your tongue as the waves thrust you beneath the surface, past sand and shore, where Atlantis meets your gaze, the lost city, a sublime utopia of fallen statues and jeweled treasures buried under kelp beds and coral branches, which your fingers pry away, unearthing the body of your father, wrinkles creasing at his lips like strips of seaweed, and you smile, noticing his fingers intertwined with your mother’s like two seahorses linking their tails together, and you exhale bubbles of blues, soothed to know that they made it to the promised land.





Wow!
Oh this is beautiful, feels so raw. Amazing imagery too, felt both like reading a poem and a story