It Hurts

Untitled | by Luna Nash | drawing

 It hurts by Lydia Wosen

It hurts

Thinking about those who don't breathe anymore

Their faces resurfacing in your mind

The sinking feeling in your gut when you remember them

The recurrent realization that that’s all they are now, a memory

That feeling that they’re stuck in time while you continue with your life

That they were left behind

Imagining what people who were closer to them are going through

Thinking you have no right to mention their death because you weren’t as close

You weren’t his brother

You weren’t his everyday friend

You were the little cousin who came to have sleepovers and played with stuffed animals with his little sister

You were the secondary character in his world

You don’t deserve pity from others when you tell them what happened

You feel unworthy telling his story

There’s a voice in your head that tells you to stop 

You silently whisper it to yourself, “stop, stop,” to drag yourself away before you go down the familiar road of grief again

The familiar road where you think about their last moments, your interactions with them before then,

the erie quietness of the days after, 

the stillness

Where you realize it’s so easy to die

Where you have to stop yourself from imagining what could have been

A rush of pain, heaviness

You didn’t know emotions could cause physical pain

Your eyes start to sting

You say to yourself, no, and the stinging subsides, you go back to typing, trying to force your eyes to read the words on your screen

Not tonight. You have a paper due tonight

But you were never good at listening to yourself

You think about the day you found out, your mother crumpled on the floor screaming prayers in another language as tears stream into her mouth, your dad’s hand on her back, your dog barking not understanding what’s happening and you walk yourself upstairs and cover your ears, 

but you don’t cry, 

Because it didn’t hit you yet

You cry when everyone else stops crying, then you’re crying alone in your room at night trying not to make a sound

You don’t want others to read this poem and pity you, you don’t want them to sympathize for you, imagine what you’ve gone through because it’s not about you because you know what you’ve gone through was only a fraction of what his family went through

You think about others thinking about their dead loved ones, knowing some were there when the light in that person’s eyes went out

Now you’re sad

It hurts

But pain is temporary

It should be temporary.