Lighted Eyes

Art by Amy Marques

“I keep thinking of how Mary Oliver exhorted us to pay attention, to bear witness… to live.”
Amy Marques strives (with varying degrees of success) to say more using less words. More of her art and words at https://amybookwhisperer.wordpress.com.

Those Two Fucks

Poetry by Wendy Dossett 

CW: Mention of Death



For Gregory


​​​
People say they don’t know what to say. 
Though actually they do. 

They say ‘no words’ and then use words. 
‘Condolences.’ ‘So sorry for your loss.’ 
‘Thinking of you at this sad time.’ 
‘So glad she’s freed from pain.’
‘Gone to a better place.’
‘Always near, so very dear.’ 

Sweet meringues. Just air and dust,
Words, like the cards, pastel pallid pall,
Crushed to nothing by grasping, desperate fingers, 
Reaching, flailing, for a stay to break the endless, sickening fall.

I call you and I croak, ‘she’s gone.’ 
You’re driving but you answer — me
‘What?! Fuck! Wait!’ 
Pulling over, you kill the engine, 
And loudly, for a second time, 
‘FUCK!’

You said other loving, gentle things,
But those two fucks you gave — for me
Were flaming torches in the heavy fog of grief. 
Burning through pretence we tame wild death. 

Those two fucks, two beams of light, became, for me, two vanes of a pelorus, 
For plotting an unseeable course in darkness, stalked by death.
Two fucks. Two decades cherished. From time to time unsheathed, deployed. 
When grief constricts the throat, the pair impart the kiss of life — a breath.
Wendy Dossett is a poet and activist in recovery from addiction, living in Eryri. Her poetry has been published by Northern Gravy, Performing Recovery and Modron. By day, she is a coastal Watchkeeper.
www.wedossett.com