Between Sun and Shadow: Planes of Grief

In free fall:
My chest holds a black box
Of screams
The reverberations of wanting more
Of wanting to make you understand
To see how it’s all crashing down
It feels like forever
An unending, fall in the deep abyss of blue
In a cylinder meant to fly and not swim
But the black box deep within my chest
You choose not to see it
Not to feel it
Slowly my light fades
My apathy grows
And eventually
I am gone

Burning:
Screams in the background
Wails in the foreground
I don’t know why it happens
How these people can just exist
and then be gone
A flash
A crater
In blinking horror, I stare
Some things cannot be fixed
Only carried

Oxygen mask:
There is so much in this world
So much to do, live, see, and breathe–
The next trip, the next dollar, the next step
A life worth living they say…
But in all my gluttony
I failed to see her
Lurking in four corners
Waiting
Stalking
Trembling
And then at touch-down
She seizes
Her hands, ashy, holding mine as I fall
A stake lodged into my heart
Death might not take me today
But Grief–She does
Following me now forever
In the shadow behind my light
A smile less bright
An eye less bold
A voice less sung–
A life less lived

From the author: Grief is a cord that exists between the heart and mind; its reverberations mold the way we see and interact with the world–in ways more permanent than we know. Grief comes in different textures, colors, thickness, knots and kinks, but it exists within all of us, between Sun and shadow. The more I grow, the more I find wanting to bring grief out from the secret, liminal space we hide it in. We deserve more than to suffer in silence.

Vineeth Vaidyula is a medical student at ISMMS and is passionate about migrant health advocacy. He finds people's stories endlessly fascinating and loves telling them. In his free time, he likes to dot paint and write poetry. Through service, art, and eventually medicine, Vineeth hopes to explore how internal and external perceptions of identity - citizenship, language, disability, and disease - impact the lives of individuals as they live, learn, work, and play.