A Letter To Grief: Swallowing of Innocence

Image Courtesy: Natalie Willis & Allison Kaminski

The clouds mourned as they hovered over the dirt that embraced the casket that held her father’s body. She begged for the moon to show pity on them and welcome itself in the sky, forcing any sign of light to retire. Her mother’s hands clawed into the ground as if she were ready to leap and release her body into the pit that would swallow the only person she had learned to love. The screams of her mother began to echo in her body, and all she could focus on was the clock that had robbed her of a father. She hoped to outrun the tears that had now become an accessory on her pale face. And the hands that were persistent in wiping them off looked foreign.

The absence of a father brought about an all more devastating presence of a void. One she sought to be filled at the hands of malice and age. She allowed her body to touch the green grass, letting the sun touch her burned skin. Her skin, which once ached with rashes at the touch of grass, now begs for the grass to embrace its empty body, convincing itself of being completely new. She had dreaded the idea of growing up without a father. But meeting him had excited her to grow older as if growing up would bring him closer to loving her. The clock that had betrayed her father now refused to help the man whom she now loved stay young. Abandonment now wrote a letter to grief, pleading to be cuddled by the dirt that embraced her father’s body.

Strike Out,

Writer: Natalie Willis

Editor: Jayna O

Tallahassee