About Death "Among the Unmourning" Poem

 “Among the Unmourning”

I live among the unmourning,
The blessed, the still-bound,
Whose mothers knit jumpers in winter
And whose fathers still fall asleep
With the TV glowing
Like a soft domestic star.

They talk about meal deals,
Mortgage rates, politicians,
The little sighs of the undisturbed.
I nod in time,
But I’m watching shadows
They cannot see.

My parents have gone somewhere
Beyond calendars.
Beyond birthdays and back pain.
No forwarding address.
Just that cold, white silence
That doctors don’t explain.

I have no spouse to distract me,
No child's voice to anchor me.
No interruptions
From the small chaos of new life.
Just a fridge that hums too loud
And a kettle that boils for one.

Grief doesn’t weep anymore—
It watches.
It folds its arms and leans against walls
At parties,
At supermarkets,
In moments where someone says,
"You're lucky to still have your folks."

I don’t correct them.
What’s the point?
They wouldn’t hear it.
Not until their turn comes—
And by then, I’ll be gone
In one way or another.

The world spins with a painted smile.
Even the wars seem staged,
Designed to distract
From the deeper void
That none dare name.

They think I’m quiet.
They call me calm.
But I am the empty seat
At my own dinner table.
The static on the channel
That never tunes in.

Still, I stay.
Because there might be one more poem.
One more moment
When the sky breaks open
And someone finally hears me
Without needing to lose everything first.

“The Quiet That Remains”

I did not know how loud love was
Until the rooms fell silent.
Not with screaming, not with rage—
Just the kind of quiet
That hums behind your eyes
When no one is left to call you child.

They left between my thirties and forties,
Softly, without ceremony.
The world did not pause.
No bells rang out.
Just a ripple in the calendar
And the long slow fade of familiar voices.

Now, I sit at tables
Where parents still joke, still nag,
Still remember birthdays
Of children who have grown tired of them.
And I say nothing.
I smile like someone with teeth made of glass.

My siblings remain—
Two fading constellations in the same night sky—
But we orbit separate memories.
And none of us can remember
The sound of her laugh exactly right,
Or whether he used to hum while shaving.

There are no children of mine
To carry their names.
No tiny echoes of the past
Tugging at my sleeve.
Just the blank horizon,
The clock,
And this invisible orphanhood.

I watch the world churn—
War, scandal, elections, floods—
The theatre of it all.
Actors in costumes pretending purpose
While the stagehands die quietly
Offstage, where no one looks.

And still I wake.
I eat.
I nod at strangers.
I pay rent on a life
That feels sublet from someone braver.

Some days I wish for an erasure,
Not of people,
But of pain-makers—
Those who crush beauty for sport
And poison the waters of hope.
Not death. Just… gone.
A cleaner world. A kinder silence.

But that’s not the story I was given.
Mine is this:
To live with the holes in the fabric.
To walk the corridors of memory
With bare feet and a steady breath.

And maybe,
Just maybe,
To write this down
So someone else—lost, aching—
Knows they are not alone
In the quiet that remains.