we of the humus (on grief)

What is the relationship between grief and honesty,

grief and truth?

I see grief as a braided rope

with strands of anger, sadness, fear, disgust,

all those most knotted of reactions

to what we have lost, in a word, to our pain.

Is grief truth because it names our most humbling truth:

we of the humus, we have lost

We lose, daily, in each moment, big and small

Is this it? Is this all there is to it?

We have lost, and we are lost

until we dare to speak truth, that is,

until we dare to grieve

Does it make the prospect of grief less a monster when I say,

“today I’m here to speak the truth of my being human“?

Having committed to truth as a naive twelve year old,

I did not know I had apprenticed to grief,

have I been absconding my mistress’ lessons all this time?

Grief, growing honesty in me,

you knock, I open the door

 

— after “self portrait as sedge meadow” by Rosemerry Whatola Trommer