Context: For most of this year, I haven’t been writing creatively. It was a massively busy work year, sprinkled with some personal dysfunction, loss, and emotional and logistical disarray. I’ve been feeling the pull to write again, but lacking any creative spark or flow to my thoughts. Tonight I was bound and determined to set something down, so I stared at a cavernously blank page for a few hours. This appeared. I never write in verse. It’s not usually the way my thoughts organize themselves. But I’ve been reading the libretto for Hamilton and I guess some of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s cadence has percolated its way into my brain. Probably temporarily. But, considering how little I’ve written, and how much I’ve missed writing, this year, I felt like anything was a victory. The topic is a common one for me – my brother’s passing. I don’t write about him to impose my grief on others. I write about him because it’s cathartic to do so. Sometimes people tell me the things I write are helpful to them. That is a reward, but not my primary objective. So, all I can hope is that whatever mental mechanisms that have rusted over this year loosen up a bit. It is therapy.
There was no discernable etymology
To the vocabulary we shared. The set
Of your spine was a glyph I could read and
The cast of your eyes no less transparent
A sign. No number of years could accrue that
I wouldn’t dream you’d been spared. Life’s
Persistent unfairnesses be damned. Spite at
Your needing to leave us is a badge I will wear.
The challenge you set was to go on breathing,
Even believing, in a present repaired from
A past’s broken glare. Reflected grieving,
Arms crossed and head bent in attempted
Excision to model a now, pressing forward,
Not moving on. Surgically bared, and dared
to belong to the world you demurred
to embrace. I can’t figure to align my thoughts,
my words, and where to find the grace. Your
memory is a place without a location. This
feeling, a permanent way of being. No verse
adequate to capture the misconception of
your absence. The days I still forget. The days
I still try to forget. The hours combine into
Time. There’s no deceiving celestial mercies,
but these grievances I indulge. It’s no secret
to divulge, you’re missed. Your light still shines.
caroline ridgway 