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This appears in a pre-2010 issue of Down in the Dirt magazine. Saddle-stitched issues are no longer printed, but you can requesting it “re-released” through amazon sale as a 6" x 9" ISBN# book! Email us for re-release to order.

The shape of grief

Theresa Ward

When I was a child, my mother wept quietly
behind the closed doors and yelled
through the open ones.
My father was quiet during both the yelling and weeping.

When I was older, she sometimes asked me to hold her tears.
I grew frustrated that they fell so easily through my fingers.
My father watched quietly as I searched for a bowl to contain them.
I finally found, hidden in a cupboard,
a hand-carved bowl.

I hated her for the weakness of tears,
for asking me to hold the shape of her grief.

I loved the quiet impassiveness of my father’s calm watching.

It was only later, I watched quietly, calm and impassive
as my father cried over her grave, that I remembered her words,
“Please, someone help me.”

I wondered if he wished he hadn’t carved the bowl?
I wondered if he wished he had been the one to hold her tears?

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