III.

Poeticizing grief is something as foreign as it is impossible, as much as I knew. James Joyce, however, succeeded in proving me wrong by creating four lines of beauty out of the death of his sister:

“She gave me eyes, she gave me ears;

And humble cares, and delicate fears;

A heart, the fountain of sweet tears;

And love, and thought, and joy.”

The death of my sister brought me to write poems like I have never written before. None of them manifest this precious grief, but they give shape this wild desire to dig below every inch of this earth, just to etch her name where only I can feel it, where only God can keep it, like her, for Himself after I am gone.


I can’t seem to immortalize my sister in a single paragraph, let alone a single line.


Every word uttered in longing will never be enough to write the prayer to bring her back.

We were both born under a waning crescent moon, nearly seven years apart. She was born on the eighteenth day, I was born the eighteenth minute. The year she was born (1984) is my birthdate in reverse (4/8/91). My mother even told me we both entered the world with a single grey hair on our heads. I can’t call these coincidences as much as I see it as fate.


Her name was Noelle, and she left this world a decade to this day. And yes, I miss her more and more every day.