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# Confessions of a Private Grief
- URL: https://www.andyposner.org/confessions-of-private-grief/
- Published: 2020-09-06T20:02:46.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-15T05:03:06.000Z
- Description: I have lived as free as a fragrance on the wind, as shackled to the earth as the vine that produced it. May I confess in a poem what is forbidden us in prose?
- Author: Andy
- Tags: poetry, #Migrated-1784090317409, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-07-15 04:39

In the yard of my childhood home  
there was a mature Jasmine shrub  
beneath my window. On many mornings  
I would arise from my private grief  
with a deep yawn and breathe in  
a sweet gulp of air that would rush  
like rum down my throat and into  
the center of me. This is love,  
atoms discovering atoms.

I recall my first experience of infirmity.  
It was like a dream, all vague shapes  
and things that make no sense in retrospect.  
An old man hobbled toward a casket.  
There was silence but for the click of his cane.  
He paid his respects, then turned. A solitary diamond  
dripped from his eye and shattered in the grass,  
so hard and so fragile. This is death,  
atoms splitting into atoms.

I have lived as free as a fragrance on the wind,  
as shackled to the earth as the vine that produced it.  
May I confess in a poem what is forbidden us in prose?  
I want the atoms you exhale, the cells of your skin,  
the platelets in your blood. To open a door and find you  
as alone as we are in dying. To touch my grief to yours.  
To be a single gust of sweetness howling in the dark.