A/N: This is a spoken word poem, meant to be read aloud. Listen to me read it here.
people will never know what to say
and it’s strange how a social pariah is made in the wake of a loss
too afraid to touch what might shatter (though it’s broken already)
don’t say a word 'cause they matter, but the silence is heavy
i feel everyone wrap me in miles of bedding, and we both create distance
you won’t bring it up, so neither will i
why won’t most of my friends look me straight in the eyes?
they say they’re afraid that they might make me cry
but why do they fear my tears?
i thought friendship would look different with so many years in our ledger
after all this time, sharing sorrows together, why can’t you share mine?
is
it heavy? does stepping in require too much time? just to listen? and
weep? just to hear when i speak of my father. his second daughter
or do you feel you must come prepared with something to say?
an offering of advice, before you run away
because it’s easier to drop a quick sorry than stay through the process
and i get it
the
nature of life is that you will forget it in three months, or six, and
as your life moves on i’ll be counting the moments where it all went
wrong
still reliving that day
every time that i do just a little escape, it gets softer, as i do
but i miss everything
didn’t know this, or notice, that grieving would bring on a whole new season
where friends fade away
and other ones enter in, new, primed to stay through another
there’s no other version of me. no going back to who i used to be
who i am now is shattered, and healing, reborn. when someone you love dies
so does all you live for
you rebuild it. with effort, it always takes time. reassessing your values as they realign
but it’s painful, while watching the image take shape
as more loved ones around you drop off, by mistake
and you drift new directions. some of them apart
the grief, multiplied, by the shift of the heart
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139,241 Literary Works • 672,522 Reviews
Context: Grief changes your relationships. It changes you. "No one has the right thing to say" does not mean, "You can't say anything right, so don't bother saying anything at all."
Please keep talking to your friends about their grief. Or at least open the door. Offer condolences. Don't let people suffer alone. Be prepared to listen and be present with them.
Everyone grieves differently. Some people don't want to be asked about their grief often, because they're just trying to survive, and it's a trigger. Some people wish they were asked how they're doing more often. Others want to be asked, but only by their close people. This poem in particular is a reflection on how isolating grief felt for me, especially after the first three months, when the rest of the world moved on, and people stopped checking in on me.
i really love this poem and it brought me some inspiration! it is so gorgeous and bathes in its sorrow at the perfect temperature. i also want to add that i really love the sound of your voice!
so i started this poem out by listening to the recording and it made me feel sad without even really being able to tell what it was about and it had nice rhythm and you could feel the way it was meant to be said. it really inticed me to go ahead and read it a couple times and it did NOT disappoint.
it starts out well and i enjoy the feel of it. i like the words wake of a loss because it's like a change aswell as a beginning. the poem then goes on to say how loved ones are unsure of what to say and how to help so they say nothing. "i feel everyone wrap me in miles of bedding, and we both create distance" is such a beautiful way of displaying this. they're too scared to make everything worse so they give you space. all the space in the world, but support is what was needed. now the poem is saying about how they expected differently of their friends and it's as if they didn't know anything about what you really needed and how isolated you felt from them. next it's saying, "an offering of advice before you run away/because it's easier to drop a quick sorry than to stay through the process" these lines are showing you know and understand why they act the way they do. wishing theyd put more effort than just doing what's easy. the next section describes the world moving on from you while youre stuck in time. you're entirely different and you can never go back. "who i am now is shattered, and healing, reborn. when someone you love dies/so does all you life for" greif changes you and you have to keep pushing. and this poem ends by showing how as you're changing you drift apart from friends and you greive the loss of friends now aswell.
some parts i love are "didn't know this or notice" and " too afraid to touch what might shatter (though it's broken already)/don't say a word 'cause they matter, but the silence is heavy" i think the use of wording in these are nice and rhythmic which'll push the effects when read outloud.
i have little critiscm for this because it's already so amazing! maybe add more rhyme and spacing, but i think it's fine as it is. keep writing i'd love to read more of your work!
This is delayed, but thanks so much for your review <3 I really appreciate you taking the time to read, think about, and reflect on my poem!
Hi there!
This captures something I think a lot of people don’t talk about enough, which is that grief doesn’t only change your relationship with the person you lost; it also changes your relationship with everyone still around you. That’s such a painful and specific thing to write about. I think you handle it with a lot of clarity.
I really like how direct the opening is:
This is such a strong way to begin because it immediately establishes hurt without overexplaining it. "Social pariah" is a really striking phrase here too. I interpret it as meaning that grief isolates people even though they haven’t done anything wrong, which feels very true to the rest of the poem.
This is another line I really like. I think the contrast between words mattering and silence being heavy is super effective. It gets at that feeling where people think they’re helping by saying nothing, but the nothingness becomes its own kind of pain.
I love "ledger" here! It gives friendship this sense of history, like there’s a record of shared care and shared debts. It also makes the disappointment feel more painful to me because they’re asking it of people who should have had enough history with them to stay.
A tiny thing I might suggest: there are a few places where the poem becomes very explanatory, and I wonder if trimming a little could make the very emotional lines feel more impactful. I know this is meant to be a spoken word poem, so please ignore if you don't care about that sort of thing! But for example:
I really like the idea here, especially "offering of advice," because it makes advice feel like this awkward substitute for presence. "before you run away" maybe tells us something we already feel from the rest of the poem. You could keep it, of course, but you might also try ending on "offering of advice" and letting the reader feel the abandonment without being directly told it has happened.
This feels very real. I interpret it as someone being hurt, very much so, and yet not completely without empathy. They understand why people move on, which almost makes it sadder. I wonder if this could be broken up slightly, though, because it’s such an important thought and right now it runs on for a long time. Maybe something like:
Totally up to you though! I know style in poetry is subjective!
I love the idea of grief being "multiplied" by changing relationships. That feels like the core of the poem to me. The original loss is already enormous, but then there are all these secondary losses of friends fading away, old versions of the self disappearing, relationships becoming strange. "the shift of the heart" is a beautiful final phrase, too.
All in all, I think this is a deeply moving poem! I hope this was helpful.
Pru
Thank you so much for your thoughtful review. I really appreciate it, and it was helpful! I know I paid less attention to the formatting because it's meant to be read, but the readability would improve in its written form if I broke some lines up.
I'm glad you were able to connect with the content and that it was moving. <3 Bless you, Pru!
<3
<3 <3 <3
Eli would like to review this poem because he likes poems, he even went and listened to it.
Holy shit (excuse my language)
Wow. Just wow. I'm in awe. First of all, your voice is amazing, I get gender envy from it and wow it makes me feel like I'm on a cloud in the middle of a quiet night sky just drifting around without a proper destination. (I'm sorry if you can't tell I'm a poet but ON TO THE ACTUAL REVIEW)
I was in shock at how much this conveyed emotions, and how deep it was. I am not that good at naming my emotions, ergo I could never really do something like this. It's truly amazing.
I especially loved the part where you said
It really hit home, because I can relate to that from a childhood experience of a friend sadly passing away due to a drowning incident. I felt like there was nothing I could possibly do to make myself go on, to keep living. This poem is so relatable it's scary. I also hope you're doing okay right now.
I really hope to see more works by you, because this is truly amazing. I love how you included the voice recording, because I could listen and follow along and feel the emotion in your words.
Sadly I'm out of time, otherwise I would write more. But keep writing great poetry!
--ELI
Thanks so much for taking the time to listen and engage with the content! I'm glad that hearing it helped you connect with the emotions conveyed in the poem. Mission accomplished.
I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your friend <3 I'm doing alright, but there are still hard days. I hope you're doing alright, yourself. Grief is always hard.
Thanks for stopping by and reviewing. See you around!
^^