Grief
by Amy Riddell

Grief covers me like a burqa—black cloak pulled on head to foot.
Burqa, the right word for grief, the way to picture its simple assumption
about what can be endured with hands tucked inside and fingers curled in
to submit, to abide despair, that dry cup, and refuse even one sip of water.

The throat suffers its raw ache and longs for what's been lost to simple
words now slipped inside the skin, inside the region where language lives.
Among the grieving and doomed what can't be said must be kept
like a secret, like a woman shielded from the eyes of pitiless men.

Amy Riddell is an assistant professor of English at Northwest Florida State College in Niceville, FL. Her poems have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Central Park, College English, Birmingham Poetry Review, and Kennesaw Review. She has two poems forthcoming in Prairie Schooner.

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