I Grieve
I grieve with the same enthusiasm as changing my bed sheets. I know it must be done so I do it quickly, curling up in a ball to sleep when it is over.
Grief is freshly laundered bedding.
I grieve the same way I season my food. I don’t know what I’m doing but it’s a lot easier to eat the same meal over and over if it tastes different every time.
Grief is a half full tub of garlic salt.
I grieve and there is a girl standing in the room with me. We were friends in secondary school and haven’t spoken since. I tell her I am sorry.
Grief is letting go of anyone but the person that died.
I grieve like a Midwest Emo band reaching their third album. I could be happy if I wasn’t so sad please for the love of god listen to how sad I am. ft. a cornet.
Grief is singing in the shower at 3am on a school night.
I grieve like a caterpillar clinging to the roof of a Tupperware box. I am going to make things so fucking cramped in here and there wasn’t a lot of room to begin with.
Grief is changing your hair colour and hoping people notice.
“Since my father died I have written new poems less and less frequently to the point that now I am lucky if I write more than a poem every six months or so. I can’t begin to write without thinking about his death, and what it means and where I am in my healing process and imagining a life where he isn’t dead, and it all goes on like this in a fun grief cycle for about an hour and then I’m not in the mood to write anymore so I stop.
“When I have felt the need to write about my father dying I’ve approached it in the same way I approach most of my poems; I’ll free write until I find a pattern or a hook line and then begin to rework until I’m happy with the shape of the poem. With this poem I wanted to show how changeable the feeling of grief was. There have been no two days the same since he died and that makes it very hard to predict how my day-to-day life will be affected by grief.
“I like to include jokes or moments of levity in the majority of my poems, and in this one I decided to pay homage to my favourite band, ‘The Front Bottoms,’ and their inclusion of a cornet in a number of their songs. I also enjoy the image of the caterpillar clinging to the roof of a Tupperware box. I’d seen a friend post a picture of exactly that on either Facebook or Instagram the day before writing this and thought, ‘yep, that’s me.’
“I shared this poem on my Instagram around the time of writing it and I believe it is the most responded to poem on my page at this time. Everyone had a different moment they related to in the poem, and I think that’s what I like most about this poem. You can find something in there that hits home for you when you’re going through the same thing, even if nothing else makes sense.”
You can find Cal on Twitter and Instagram @CalThePoet and on Facebook as Callum Wensley.
Ben Banyard 