Reading “Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you.” by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Poetry Lunch S2E6

Reading “Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you.” by Gabrielle Calvocoressi, published in Poetry magazine Oct 2021.

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Welcoming all the sadness that comes with remembering loved ones long gone—and feeling grateful for my capacity to grieve. To feel! It seems a simple thing but I grew up with a real threat in my family tree of unfeeling. Lack of empathy. Inability to love. So when I am overcome with grief, even in the seizing, halting, blustery nose-blowing gasping throes of it, there’s always a small hard seed of gratitude for the feeling I am feeling.

I love! I love so many and so much. Loss is inextricable from loving of course but I’d not trade it. I know the big feelings one direction stretch and grow our insides for big feelings in every direction; so grief and joy are not unrelated. My capacity for both grows with every new loss and every new love.

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Today’s poem is not yet in a book as far as I know. I found it on Poetry Foundation's website.