Fifty Shades Of Grief

Juliet died on 4 January, 2023. Exactly one month after we had celebrated our 41st anniversary, and when it appeared that she was slowly recovering from her tricuspid valve operation. We counted our first significant “date” from 20 May 1979, so we didn’t quite make it to 44 years together. Already I have several poems recounting my state of mind and a dozen or more in scribbled notes, so the pun is obvious, and Juliet would have groaned aloud at it. 

Little poppies, little hell flames
Do you do no harm?
       ...
There are fumes I cannot touch.
Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?

If I could bleed, or sleep! ---
If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!

Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule,
Dulling and stilling.

But colourless. Colourless.
                               (from “Poppies in July” 
                                 by Sylvia Plath)