Sam Rose – 3 poems 

I Googled

 

According to the internet, you don’t exist.

I am trawling through obituaries

looking for proof you ever lived.

 

I have been looking for someone

who understands. Someone else

who family friends referred to as

the replacement child. Someone else

who is the “after”.

 

I googled “get rid of yellow stains

on really old flannel teddy bear”

but it gave me nothing.

 

I googled “how to grieve

for a sibling you never knew”.

I guess my requests were

too specific.

 

I googled “how to grieve for

someone you never knew”

and all I got was people

grieving for celebrities.

 

I googled “death in family during

childhood social anxiety”

to see if you could explain me.

Why I am the way I am.

 

There is probably nothing to explain.

 

I googled “non-grief”. 

 

 

Seaside distractions

 

Once more onto the beach

we descend

because that’s the place where

troubles are buried

in the sand

in the hands of the sea

clawing at the shore

and I can’t be sure

when we finish watching the

horizon, when we turn our

backs, when we eat fish and

chips, when we complete our

list of seaside distractions,

that these memories won’t

resurrect, raise their heads and

redress themselves, stand erect

and elect to follow me to the car,

sit with me as we drive home,

and embed themselves inside

my head again, where only I

can see. So

in that regard

I put up my guard

again

and

once more onto the beach

we will descend in

a few months’ time

to bury them all,

to put them all to sleep

until

like the sun that

we watched set

 

they rise

once more.

 

 

Lumpy rabbit-dog

 

Lumpy rabbit-dog without a name

floppy-eared with a bellyful of

old flannel pyjamas

without a definite identity

somehow symbolic

of my now non-relationship

with you

 

I think I’m grieving 28 years late

but that’s okay

that’s okay

 

I might not miss you

but I am missing you

and I’m feeling that

quite acutely

 

I am noticing the hole

the scoop of flesh

carved out of my

own belly, the

red tendons raw

beneath, exposed

and now I want to

transpose this flesh

and the lumpy

rabbit-dog-without-

a-name so that I can

carry a piece of you

with me, give myself

a bellyful of old

flannel pyjamas.

 

 

Sam Rose is a poet, writer and editor living in England and studying part-time for her MA Creative Writing. She is the editor of Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine and The Creative Truth. In her spare time, she enjoys eating too much chocolate and learning Swedish.