7 Stages of Grief
Three words,
eight letters together spell out I love you.
Together, they promised to take on this journey forever.
Holding hands, gentle whispers.
Eye to eye, hand in hand, praying for this to never end.
Grappling each other as newlyweds do.
A sacred day – yes, I do.
A flurry of words.
Where nothing was dreaded more than the days’ end,
now a time in which she would no longer have you,
with soothing whisper
and a gentle reminder of their forever
But as the saying goes, nothing lasts forever,
No matter what you do,
soon the loving chatter becomes claims of deceit, yet, only whispers.
Or maybe it’s merely blissful ignorance, a manipulation of words,
hoping to eliminate the possibility of the great heartbreak of you.
No, not your heartbreak. The end.
Everything good must end
But why their forever?
These are the things meant to happen to others, someone we can call ‘you’
This wasn’t the justice they were due.
So was it only empty words?
False, yet so sweet, whispers?
Frustration from wanting to scream, yet the only thing that exists is whispers
about the pain, pushing them to the end
of a great Shakespearean relationship, finishing with mournful words.
For why would one promise forever?
When that is something no one can do.
Not even you.
But maybe it was never you
Because she no longer drowns under the memory of your whispers,
or the threats of what you might do.
In the end,
nobody can be anyone’s forever
no matter the number of promises made through words.
Ultimately you are all you are left with in the end,
with whispers of you great romance lasting forever.
No matter what you do, all that’s left of you is just words.
—
Writing this sestina for English is probably one of the harder things that I have had to do for class. Due to the highly structured way that the sestina is made, choosing the 6 words that would be repeated throughout was quite a difficult task. However, once those words were chosen, it became easier to complete the task. I did find certain parts of the poem to feel a bit forced or unnatural due to needing to end with certain words, but I think overall the poem isn’t that bad. I wrote this poem to sort of focus on the idea of divorce and an ending relationship, but then after realizing the presence of 7 stanzas I thought about how I could use the structure to create a more meaningful/creative meaning. I thought of the 7 stages of grief and then proceeded to loosely base my sestina off of that. While I didn’t have the space to make each stanza associated with each stage of grief, I tried to organize the text in the same order as the stages of grief.