By Ruby Saggers – Associate Creative Writing Editor
’When robins appear, loved ones are near’
There was something in the orange that day.
Modern grief, it seems, is to “cast thy nighted colour off!”
Celebratory drinks and fruitful colour in memoriam, thus I am no Hamlet.
I had spent July through to August in solitude, finding it difficult to move through the stages.
The list of bereavement: Denial, Ang- No. I am yet to succumb to blame.
Denial. It is all I could feel. ‘It is gone five p.m., where is __? He must be coming home soon.’
Watch him walk through those doors, waiting for his cuppa splodge to sip on.
It went cold that day.
I am stuck in the first stage of lamentation, and I have been this way for eight hundred and eleven days.
Malleable brain thinking he still treads the same ground that I do.
Dearest mortal shell is two years gone,
Though the soul within it surrounds me still.
I see you in the robins pecking at my windows.
In the sea of orange following my beloved sibling in August,
The three hundred minds mingling memories in a hall, decorated tangerine.
I see hope in colour, after searching for something to anchor me – keep me steady.
And though denial remains, citrine made grief brighter. Lighter.