Tag: grief ritual
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Blue Mercy
“Blue Mercy” began as a quiet observation—a fly, a door, a gesture. But beneath its domestic stillness, I found a philosophical hinge: mercy as both restraint and release. The poem is an allegory of consequence, where the blue swatter becomes a symbol of ethical tension—between intervention and surrender, between light and disappearance. My wife’s presence,…
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Soft Closure
Soft Closure” emerged from the quiet aftermath of loss—when grief no longer demands spectacle but settles into the architecture of daily life. The poem is built around a single domestic gesture: a door closing softly. It resists sentimentality and instead leans into restraint, letting silence and echo do the emotional work. I wanted to evoke…
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The Eulogy I Couldn’t Give
The eulogy I couldn’t give to my mother at her funeral I gave to my father at his celebration of life.It was a sentimental piece I shaped more for comfort than truth,imagining him— the first ghost to cross the thresholdof the house I bought in a new subdivisionstill raw with fresh pavement and silence—where I…