I need to unlearn your touch
The sound of your breathing
Next to me in the dark
I need to unlearn a lifetime
Of everything about you
-gws
Unlearn
Category: Emotions
Getting Over You (and Other Divine Interventions)
The Universe intervened
In our amber-trapped lives
Cleaving us asunder
Now that your umbra is clearing
I begin to see the Universe has
Gifted me infinite sunrises
Bursting with innumerable possibilities
After half my life with you
Standing you up
Holding you up
I find myself suddenly free
Of the responsibility of you
I delight in the joy of doing anything
Without your judgment
I relax remembering that there are no
Relentless expectations to navigate
I revel in a full night's uninterrupted sleep
I relinquish more and more tension from my body
As each day passes without you
A single divine gift containing
All the possibilities I can dream of
I will not get over you in a day
You have left me a moonscape
Desolate and damaged
I will redeem and reclaim myself
Both shadow and light
Ever shifting and changing
Just like the magnificent moon
-gws
This is the Poem I’ll Never Write
Holding hands in matching rockers
Laughing about when we were young
You reminiscing about record stores and ska shows
As I tell our grandchildren tales of magic
Spending our sunset days in loving conversations
Each other's best bestie
Strolling into the ever after that follows the happily
-gws
The Cage
Inelegant and rough hewn
Invisible to all but me
Oppressive and injurious
This prison of grief and fear
Holds me fast
Arrested
The key to joy held tight in my hand
I wait for the guard to look away
So I can fly free
-gws
Liminal State
I exist in a liminal state
A being
And not a being
Grief ebbs and flows in king tides
Emptying me
Submerging me
Stealing away my breath
With its pressure changes
Feelings grow in question marks
Within my hollow chest
Proliferating like fungus in the fall
Inside of my being that is not a being
Emptiness overflowing with nothingness
Destruction and restoration
Warring to fill the immeasurable void
Shaped like my cremated heart
Pulsing with unfathomable aching
Testing the tolerances of
My being that is not a being
It is surreal to be and not be
To experience the reality of the question
Posed by Master Shakespeare
In rhyme and sonnet so long ago
To understand that one can be both
A being and not a being
-gws
Spring Rain
The first spring rain falls from a darkened sky
Washing away the heaviness from the air
Bringing deliverance of spirit
Offering itself as balm for my weary heart
Through its steady patter beyond my open window
Petrichor rising to ground me
Cool and damp air greeting too hot skin
I close my eyes
Imagining my complete surrender to it
Making an offering of all that scars me
All that weighs so heavily on my shoulders
I welcome this renewal
This forgiveness
This peace
I invite this healing
Surrender to this gentleness
Allow this act of cleansing
Readying my world to reawaken
Readying me to bloom again
-gws
Redemption
Sometimes
The simple act of cleaning a toilet
Can feel like redemption
-gws
Do Not Confuse Grief With Guilt
A friend said to me,
“Remember you didn’t cause it.
You couldn’t have prevented it.
You have nothing to feel guilty for.
It is okay to grieve.
There is much to grieve,
But do not confuse grief with guilt.”
I did not know how much I needed
These words until they were spoken.
-gws
Step Back
Everyone who has ever loved you
Have put their hands up and
Taken a step back
Now they are looking at me
Wondering if now is when
I will finally do the same
-gws
Rage Fire
The truth has lit a rage fire in my belly
Where there was guilt and pity
There is now a simple aching coal
Burning so hot it challenges the sun
-gws
Words Wishes and Wisdom 