Mercy: Healing From Writing Poetry

Grief lives in my body. There are memories I can feel before I can explain them. A smell. A color. The sound of a sewing machine. The movement of thread through cloth. A piece of ribbon saved for decades. A familiar place that suddenly feels inhabited by people who are gone. Writing poetry gives those sensations somewhere to go. Instead of asking myself, How do I explain this? I can ask, “What does this grief look like?” Does it look like a loose thread? A chair rocking by itself? A knot that refuses to come undone? A piece of indigo cloth holding more blue than I thought possible? Those questions move me away from explanation and toward imagination. And imagination gives me room to breathe.

I Don’t Have to Write the Facts

This may be one of the most important lessons I am learning. When I begin with autobiography, I sometimes feel responsible for telling the story correctly. Poetry gives me permission to loosen that responsibility. Memory can become metaphor. A person can become water. A house can remember. Ancestors can whisper. A quilt can speak. The dead can answer questions they never answered while they were living. I can even write a dream in which I abandon something I would never abandon in waking life. I can follow that imaginary decision and discover what it reveals. Poetry lets me ask “What if?” That tiny question opens a door.