All the New Thinking is About Loss

Jeannette Beebout
May 1, 2013
In-class poem #1

All the new thinking is about loss
that sick, nauseating feeling that
lingers in your body, but
not just that, it’s not there.
It’s the ultimate emptiness that
lets you know that something once went
there, or here, maybe something in-between
us or them, even that thing.
It’s moving away from childhood friends,
just to let new ones in.
But the friends are words or phrases
that tear down or inspire.
A new form of lifestyle.
I mean, that’s what you moved
3000 miles away for, right?
A new life is hoped to begin,
but the past is like a bleach stain
on a brand new pair of jeans.
Which just sits with your old ones,
no wearing them, the new ones mocking
them with their deeper blue.
Like these new thoughts do.
I feel shame as I unpack my
tattered luggage and black garbage bags
full of my life.
And the feeling comes back,
washes over my flesh and
sends chills down my back.
I am alone.
Alone in this new house
and all I can do is sit and think
of anything other than what I have known.
So I sit in that creaky
porch swing, wind blowing like grandma’s last
few breaths of grandma on her death bed.
I am not alone anymore.