Jeni De La O | Eight Stages of Someone Else’s Grief

Jeni De La O is an Afro-Cuban poet and storyteller in Detroit. Her chapbook, Lady Parts is out now from Grey Borders Books. Her work has appeared in Rattle, Obsidian Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Fifth Wednesday, Rigorous Magazine, Okay Donkey, and others. She is a Poetry Editor for Rockvale Review and organizes Poems in the Park, an acoustic reading series based in Detroit. Her full length collection of poems, Dying Far from Home, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

Jeni De La O's Website

Also by Jeni De La O: Lady Parts Morning Shift Our love will stretch to cover this in time

September 2019

Jeni De La O

Eight Stages of Someone Else’s Grief

I. futility you are a dead flower. you are a dead flower reminder of the problem; you are alive and not dead. II. un-fixability remember swallowing cold water when your body is overheated, the sensation of it branching from cell to cell inside of you. this moment is the absence of that sensation. III. self-conscious anxiety a mosquito bite inside your body. 23 feet of intestines dotted with mosquito bites from end to end. IV. succumbing standing in two inches of very clear, very cold water. your socks are wet and all the blood in your body is rushing to your feet III-b. self-conscious anxiety, round II you are an eight year old caught trying on their mothers heels. that you love anyone is inconsequential. V. finite experience this is not your sadness, but you feel sad about it anyway. you are lacking. I-V. unfairness a looming dust of disappointment settling in your lungs. VII. duality of memory a drop of cool water on the tip of the tongue.

This poem is the result of a two sentence conversation I had with someone I love very much. They, seemingly out of nowhere and mostly to themselves, mentioned missing their mother’s chocolate cake, and the only response I had was “I’m sorry.” When someone you love loses someone they love, it leaves you in a strange spot. Their loss is not your loss, but you still feel the impact of their loss in a way that is difficult to articulate, at least it was for me. Anxiety and inadequacy well up in the face of being unable to fix the situation or commiserate. You have a sadness, but it’s a tangential sadness, that’s what I was trying to clarify in this poem.

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