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How to Speak of Grief<\/strong><\/p>\n I break it to her gently. He was old<\/em>, I say, She stares back at me, waiting for more. She drops her sandwich and howls. small hands cling round my neck wet face buried in my coat. I know<\/em>, I weep, stroking her hair, I know<\/em>. where we cry for the city farm, for the field <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rachel Bower<\/strong> is the author of\u00a0Moon Milk\u00a0<\/i>(Valley Press, 2018) and\u00a0Epistolarity and World Literature\u00a0<\/i>(Palgrave\u00a0 How to Speak of Grief I break it to her gently. He was old, I say, he had a good life, he was ready. She stares back at me, waiting for more. He won\u2019t wake up again. She drops her sandwich and howls. Wracked with sobs, her body crumples, small hands cling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17029"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17303,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17029\/revisions\/17303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nhe had a good life, he was ready<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nHe won\u2019t wake up again<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nWracked with sobs, her body crumples,<\/p>\n
\nas if I too might disappear,<\/p>\n
\nBut I don\u2019t want him to sleep forever<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nPassing shoppers glance at the bench<\/p>\n
\nthat now stands empty, our apples left to rot.<\/p>\n