Grief

Was it ever okay for me to grieve?
To grieve
my brother
dying

14 months old,
while my mum

was pregnant with me.
To grieve
my mum dying
with a new baby in her womb
when I was three years old.

My first memories:
"Please do not beat me!"
My smaller version says that very clearly.
"Please do not beat me!"

How can you
beat

a three year old
whose mother just died
for crying?

How much more beastly
can humans

become?
How much more ghastly
can human behavior get?

I wonder,
and finally
I can allow
all the grief
let myself feel it.
Hold myself with the grief and the despair of the three year old
that did not have an environment
where it was safe
to grieve

the lost mother,
the lost family.

************************************************

 Have I ever mourned for myself?

The lost opportunities,
the un-lived decades,
spent in life's waiting room,
somewhere between the living
and the dead.

The self-hatred
and self-disgust
that are the more or less inevitable results
of a broken life
in a society
which values performance
above all else.

Can I mourn for myself?
For the lost years,
the accumulated misery,
the terrible loneliness,
the unfulfilled longings.

Can I let the tears come?
Can I hold myself in my misery
with all the pain and the sweetness
that this embrace entails?