This is an interesting perspective if you are a poet.

I am a poet, in fact the initials of my middle names spell P.O.E.M. I will not tell you the names, we are not that intimate but now you know one more cool thing about me. As a self acclaimed poet, I have spent years writing poetry in all its forms. From cringe to mildly excellent to something of a wonder. I have acquired quite a collection of my thoughts in metaphors and when the world gets too stressful, I read my poems in the order of when they were written to get a sneak peak onto the many lives I have lived before that moment. Even though I swear that my poems have nothing to do with me, I can’t delude myself that you can’t tell where my head was or what I felt in that moment when you read my poems in order. So I read over and over because I love to see how much I have changed, what words I was excited about by how many times they were used, what themes I was curious to write about. In my recent walk down my memory lane. I found two poems I had written in a span of one year and they were both titled ‘I sat alone with grief’. I found it interesting that in two different versions of me, I wrote the exact same thing without realizing it. What that says about my relationship with loss, I won’t say because this is not about that. This is more a literary review of two poems with the same starting line and what a reviewer would think of the personas involved. I wonder what you as a reader would think of each of these poems if you stumbled upon them differently and what they might say to you. In 2025, I wrote this: I sat alone with grief,On a night where the moon was split in two,And the stars were too broken to shine Like a wounded bird,Scouring the dark skyFor a warm nestI asked to build a homeIn its armsTo find comfortFor the hollow in my heart It told me nothingNot its name or its wayOr if there was spaceTo lay my pain But It’s face heldA thousand bruises the same color as mine.perhaps this is the nest,the home I longed for,two broken things,learning to be still. In 2026, it went like this:I sat alone with grief,under a bright sun,with flowers spread around me,and the laughter of joy unbridled. In the midst of that beauty,I held hands with the wiry bonesOf her, griefIs that truly your name, I askedor only the one I gave you?<del>Why are you here?</del> She smiled at me,and pressed cold fingers,into my spine,until I could no longer breatheuntil the flowers started to witherand the sun turned grey. She wore me thinAnd I ached to pull freeWhy are you here?I whispered over and over,an ache in my throat,a burning under my tongue And when I could no longer speakI found versions of mein a pool of my own tearsmy hands were freebut I didn't know if grief had stayed.Or if it has taken me with itIf i had become it,Or it had become me.I would love for other poets to review these poems and let me know what each of them meant to you. What they tell you about the persona and grief.

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