I wrote this at the poetry workshop today. It’s called “strange entanglement”.
I love you in a way you cannot love yourself
in a twice divorced, second wife way that never happened, you want me so bad you don’t care
if your chokehold love is killing me
and I think it would kill you to stop pretending
I think it would kill you to let me go
even if it would save my life
you call me wife and spouse and leave me
screaming, but
when I touched you that night I think we
both knew it was over
and I was grieving, I have been grieving
and you don’t know how, you never did
one time, you took me out to eat
and everyone in the restaurant gathered to you
like flies on a carcass
I’d always wanted to be invisible, forgotten
but not like that
when we met you said you’d been wandering
since before sunrise, trying to stay out of the
house and away from your partner at the time
it had been at least seven hours and you
were covered in sweat
as you spilled all the things you thought you
wouldn’t there to me
at that table
it’s been three years of riding as a pair of ghosts
you’ve never stopped wandering
and I’m very talented at grieving
it’s practically one of my best friends now
I never thought I’d have to waste so much
of my youth grieving for the living
grieving for myself
grieving for you
-Allēna 10/19/2025
#grief #griefPoetry #grievingTheLiving #lgbtqwriter #poet #poetry
