The Weight of Grief
Silence creeps in
the moment I stop moving.
It hits me hard,
a boxer’s fist in my stomach,
stealing my breath,
scattering my senses.
Time stops, and I feel it all.
Shivers crawl under my skin,
a twisting ache wrapping my heart
in barbed wire.
I tell them I’m okay.
My lips lie while my heart trembles,
a tsunami nobody can hear.
I push through,
closing the lid, screwing it down
so tight that the storm inside
doesn’t spill into their world,
so my pain stays with me,
hidden in corners,
keeping the score.
0–100
It’s ugly.
It’s dark.
It’s somber, scary,
a frozen wave that crashes again and again
with no warning, no mercy.
I don’t want to speak it—
I cannot—
but it speaks anyway.
I don’t want to feel it—
I cannot—
yet it feels me anyway.
In tremors, in quiet gasps,
in the way my body refuses to forget,
in the tingling rushing through my veins.
Grief walks beside me,
sometimes gentle, sometimes crushing,
sometimes quiet, sometimes deafening,
reminding me that love and loss
run along the same fragile vein,
woven from the same fabric.
I am still here,
shivering, trembling, frozen, surviving.
Here for another day,
to tell my story and no be forgotten.
By Lorena Fernandez Collazo
