Works in Progress: Meditations on Grief

Hi friends, 

Thought I'd share some of the meditations on grief I've been writing throughout May to fellow Kundiman fellows (as part of their 2023 postcard project with the Poetry Coalition). These are all drafts that might get turned into other things later. Thanks for being here, and thanks as always for supporting me and my work. 

Love, NaMee

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They say grief comes in waves but even waves seem gentler than I'd describe it as. For me grief comes in thunderstorms or in potholes or in whatever the phenomenon is called when you are washing dishes and a glass slips out of your hand and shatters. Grief arrives at awkward, ordinary moments. A wave is much more graceful, a softer coat than I ever imagined my grief wearing

*

When grief showed up at my door she

didn't knock so much as elbow herself

in. She was so rude! Stayed

for days, months. she said very little

but she was always in the way. Sleeping

on the kitchen floor, sobbing in the sink.

One by one she cut all the leaves off my

plants, practiced signing her name

in sharpie on the wall. She super glued

objects together. Spoons to other spoons.

My tongue to my teeth. This was before I knew

how to take care of her. One day she tried

to make soup. She chopped her left

fingers, mistaking them for roots. She sat her bare

ass on the stove, her body a pot, her blood close

to boiling. She flinched, maybe. She bit into a head

of garlic, like an apple. Please, I begged her, taking

the garlic, holding her hand, pulling her towards a chair.

The chairs were glued to the table. She sat on the floor. I

found an onion, a new knife, I turned the heat down, I added

water. I am still stirring

*

Are you good with plants? What do you think is wrong with the plant in my window, who is soaking up the sun and a fresh glass of water and whose leaves are browning and hands are curling and who is right now living and dying at the same time, wishing for something I may never be able to give it

*

If the ground has thawed where you are, bury

a teaspoon of salt. Water it, water it some

more. Feed it sunshine and memories and

kelp. Grow an ocean. Swim. Make friends

with sharks. Strike a business deal with

a seahorse. Find a good whale and settle down

with them. Where did so and so go, your land ones

will wonder. They are looking for you.

Do you miss them

*

Before the wake there were flowers, before the flowers your heart stopped, before your heart stopped your grandson took his first step and before the step there was a rope and the rope was three hundred hugs long and we tied a box to it and then we threw it over the side of the boat. The box sunk to the ocean floor and a crab walked into it, but before the crab walked into it you stuffed small pieces of a dead salmon into the bait can, cradled in your hand, the waves rocking us, we traded one life for another and another and another

*

Time and Grief are stepsisters, unlikely friends but related through marriage. My own Grief and my own Time, they hated each other's guts when they met. My Grief would stick a finger in time’s eye and Time would jump, sometimes a few inches back and sometimes a few months forward. Time would borrow Grief’s clothes without asking and often she would stain them and she would never say sorry. I made them bake a cake with me and the cake tasted like dirt. It tasted like dirt because we made it with our hands and we ourselves were all buried.

This was the only way we got along

*

To grieve my father I stabbed my yard. I bought tools for the occasion, my favorite being the three-pronged hoe. I stabbed and pulled and yanked and cursed. I overturned the earth, one clod at a time. I was a 5 foot 2 god. A slow fury. An awkward destruction. It was the only way I knew how to make a garden. Before a garden becomes a garden it is just mud and nerves. I had more mud and nerves than plants so my friends gave me some that they didn't need, roots and all. I called my mud an orphanage. An adoptee joke maybe. You can't stab an orphan into the dirt, you have to bury her with your hands. A master gardener taught me to carve a little moat around the top to trap water. My orphans, my castles, my kingdoms, my garden of grief. I protect them

*

Fortunately, I have never been eaten by a tiger but if I was

I hope he asks me if I have any last words and with my last

words    I will tell him                                  that I love him

*