Forgotten memories

The thing they don't tell you about grief is that you forget. And I don't mean those brief moments of silence before you open your eyes in the morning and reality comes flooding back.

I'm talking about how that person wasn't part of your day-to-day life anymore so you're used to their absence, until one day you see their name in your phone and you realise you haven't messaged them in a while, and it takes a second to remember why.

My sister died four months ago. I mourned her. I don't know if I miss her. She still exists within me. I will forget what her voice sounds like. She is one third of my childhood and no more of my future. I still cry for her. 

NaPoWriMo 2025 (part IV)

Days 12-14 of NaPoWriMo

Grief

The grave is a lonely place,

But only for the mourner

Flesh and bones are temporary,

Hold on to the memories,

A thought cannot die

And if you spy, in the far corner

Of the graveyard, an unmarked plot

Beneath an elder tree,

Know that the bones interred there

Are a wish

And the spirit of the Black Dog

Has ushered your loved one

To their eternity

Foraging Fungi

In congregated groups beneath the blackberries

And clustered heaps on silver birch and hazel trees

Enticing shades of ochre, russet, and crimson

Or muted browns and greens that hide them 'neath oak trees

Their fluted forms, bulbous sacs, and elegant gills

Microscopic spores that drop from their aging gills

Forced

In the warm, damp dark

A root becomes a shoot becomes a stem.

The creak and groan of cellulose,

Reaching for a non-existent light.

The slight flutter of juvenile leaves

And the faint pitter-patter as soil is upheaved.

Clean pink flesh, and the stress of growth

Is sugary sweet,

A snail's foot has ten thousand teeth,

Ten thousand tiny chomps to feast

And the rhubarb keeps

On growing.