The Endless Sea: grief poetry

By Stefanie Briar

"Trauma forges you into a force that never chose to be reckoned with".

The Endless Sea is a deep-dive into the vast ocean that is grief. It poetically examines three very different types of grief: grieving the dead, grieving the living, and grieving the self. No emotion is left unwritten, no stone is left unturned. Riding the r

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stefanie Briar
• Release date: Jun 10, 2024
• ISBN: 9798330215799

Book preview

Chapter 1

grieving the dead

It comes in waves

that never break…

How dare the sun rise.

How dare the stars shine.

How dare the sky not fall into the sea.

How dare the earth not split its seams

and swallow me where I am standing.

You. Are. Gone.

How dare the world continue to turn.

Missing you will be the end of me.

This is dry land,

but grief is the endless sea,

and I am drowning.

That first night, I screamed.

I shrieked and wailed into a pillow,

bloodcurdling cries suffocated

by fabric and feathers while I poured out

my rage, my despair, my unrelenting anger.

I had never felt like more of an animal.

And I realized it then: grief changes you.

It rewires the brain, re-helixes the DNA,

brands unfathomable pain upon the heart

until it is thick with scar tissue.

To miss you is to lose myself too,

to become a walking, empty husk,

forever captive to a heart that has

the audacity to keep beating

even though yours never will again.

Whatever humanity is left in me

leaks out in the places I store my pain.

I have never felt like less of a person:

screaming my way into grief

and dreaming myself away

to wherever you are.

The greatest paradox:

the weight of your loss

is the anchor around my ankles,

but the strength of your love

is what keeps me reaching skyward.

What could I have done?

You laid there cold and grey,

soon to be the ashes of your former fire,

and I wished I’d known what was coming.

How could I not have been there?

How could I not save what has saved me

more times than I could ever count?

I bargained, negotiated, lawyered, and

begged: you, myself, the universe,

and every force imaginable

for a do-over, a rewind, an hourglass flip

that would put everything back in its place.

But I clung on, uselessly and helplessly

to what had already slipped away.

And I prayed without praying

that I would one day be able

to forgive you for leaving

and myself for not knowing

it was coming.

Language does not properly convey

the intolerable pain of losing you.

I am:

Bereft.

Crestfallen.

Sickened.

Dejected.

Despondent.

Hopeless.

Melancholy.

Vanquished.

Morose.

No word could ever come close

to adequately describing how it feels

to endure the unendurable.

My heart? Broken.

My body? Numb.

My soul? Gone (flown away to wherever you are).

My mind is a tangled web of dark thoughts

and erratic emotions.

My mood vacillates between blind rage

and crippling depression.

Grief is a single word with a thousand meanings,

none of which do the subject any justice.

Grief is the endless sea.

There is nothing out ahead of me

but constant, churning darkness.

Grief is the endless sea.

There is no dry land on the horizon,

only new ways to drown.

Grief is the endless sea,

its current having its way with me,

mercilessly dragging me onward…

toward nothing

but more pain.

Grief is the endless sea:

the sun rising each day

on more invisible agony,

on new ways for the world

to no longer contain you,

on missed milestones

that become more links

in a neverending chain

of missing you.

You keep losing them

after you lose them.

It happens in small ways

and through little reminders

that they once were here…

hair left in a brush,

a handwritten note,

their favorite song,

the scent of their clothes.

Each of these discoveries

is its own aftershock-

a byproduct of the earthquake

that ended life as you knew it…

tiny, forked river funerals

that eventually flow

into the same endless sea.

Lately, every day

begins the same way:

I wake up okay

for a split second,

and then I remember

that you are gone.

I am whole for a moment,

and then suddenly

my heart is b r o k e n.

Your fire was my inheritance,

but I was unprepared for the violence:

the unyielding violence of the grief,

of the missing piece out of place.

Some days, it is screaming red

and bewilderingly mean,

bellowing its way out of me.

The storm inside is unleashed,

and my own palms are kissed

by the nail crescents of clenched fists.

And I hate absolutely everything

when I miss you this ferociously.

I yank at handfuls of my hair

and punch anything that will have me

until I leave my mark on something

and the sight of my own blood

returns me to myself.

The problem is

I always return without you.

I am a soul in ruins,

a house condemned.

Inside,

it is as though someone

turned off all the lights

then boarded up the windows

and the front door.

Nobody is home.

Nobody is home anymore.

The promise of someday

is enough to set my teeth on edge.

Someday, you will feel better again.

Someday, it will get easier.

Someday, this will be a distant memory.

Someday, you will no longer be in pieces.

But today I am