by Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor

I filled the mantle with cliché messages of condolence, sympathy, loose words like embrace instead of hug, thug, or little tinsel wrapped chocolates called kisses.  I hung them like Christmas ornaments in February. Once upon a time I delivered the same sorry so damn sorry so fucking sorry that you have to experience this. News is out.  Someone overhead whispers at the yoga studio then offered me a hug before she drove to Maine, rubbernecking gratitude, that this time it’s not me, not me, not me.

Continue with “Grief Part II“

Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor, University of Georgia Meigs Professor of Education, is the author of The Creative Ethnographer’s Notebook, Imperfect Tense (poems) and five other books on the arts of language and education. Recipient of numerous NEA Big Read Grants, a NEA Distinguished Fellowship, Hambidge Residency Award, and the Beckman award, her poems, translations, and creative nonfiction have appeared in Georgia Review, Bitter Southerner, Lilith, Poet Lore, Rattle, American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Hadassah, Plume and elsewhere.