Adrift at Home: Grief in Familiar Places

By Lauren Michelle Levesque

so many conversations

our dark humour.

what you expect as

appropriate mourning 

attire:

black dress,

black veil,

jewelry made out of

plaited human hair.

no good news. only weight 

behind our laughter.

later at home, I think 

about plaited hair,

and cry hard into 

the kitchen sink.

***

the tale: “death is part of life.”

a cycle, ancient, constant.

each day, a page 

turned to absence.

I wash clothes, 

find remnants.

I hear signs,

memories from 

before.

really, they are just

sorrow, the cycle of 

what is left: .

***

care and grief

seep into my clothes.

pull down the fabric, 

loosen clasps, 

separate seams.

I expect my skin 

to follow, sliding 

down my body with

teeth, nails, and hair.

somehow, the space 

between care     and     grief

keeps me suspended,

a perpetual restraint 

against pooling on 

the kitchen floor.

Lauren Michelle Levesque is an arts-based researcher and associate professor in the School of Leadership, Ecology and Equity at Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Canada. Her art and research explore the role of everyday spaces as sites of social and political import as well as profound individual and communal knowing. Her poems and photographs have been published in various journals including Studies in Social Justice, Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies, Drifting Sands Haibun and as part of projects such as Emotional Ecologies with the Network in Canadian History and Environment.