I set solid creative intentions this year, from monthly and weekly goals for writing, submitting, and querying, to participating in and facilitating writing groups, classes, and workshops. I’m all in, elbows covered in clay, nostrils just above the water, with new projects (novels, stories, poems) that expand the pages. Fabulous communities of writers that lift me. I forget, sometimes, that I’m still unfurling grief.

I was surprised this week in an online writing session with Amherst Writers and Artists when my pen visited this familiar friend. But is it a surprise?

Today marks three years since Mom died. I still hate that she’s gone. And I hate (yes, I’m using a strong word) many of the things that have happened since she died.

But it’s a mix, and I’m writing my way through and with the grief and the joy.

The prompt in the writing session this week was from Ada Limón’s poem “Instructions on Not Giving Up.” Her poem and my pen led me to this, my unfurling grief.

Unfurling Grief

I like that line near the end of Ada Limón’s poem:
Unfurling like a fist to an open palm.

Closed to open.
Attachment to letting go.
Fear to peace.

We do this.
We clench up.
“No! Not that.”
Or we scream at the ghost in the sky:
“No, no, no. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.
Make this stop.”

But it doesn’t stop.

The leaves brown in the fall and fall, fall, fall.
The winters come.

You can scream at the chill winds that separate the leaves from their trees.
“Stop it! Damn you! Stop!”
But the winds don’t stop.
The leaves fall.
No amount of Elmer’s glue or magic glitter will save the leaf from the fall.

So, go ahead.
Unclench your fist.
Release your jaw.
Soften your brow.
Relax your eyes.

There now.
Breathe.
Slowly.
Take your time.
Slowly allow,
Slowly accept,
Slowly and gently embrace.

It’s nature.
Natural.
Expected.
The fall comes to all.
Unclench and learn.

As the winter comes for another,
We practice our own wintering.
As your fist opens,
The winds dry the tears of your palms.

Welcome the cold hush.
It’s necessary.
The dormant season.
It has its own beauty.

And see your unfurling fist?
Like a leaf in spring.
One day hidden under the rough skin of an old tree.
The next, emerging, waxy, moist, green.

It never needed the magic of your glitter
Or the desperation of your beckoning to the gods.
The leaf was always there.
Always on its way back to you.

In these cycles, we might find our weariness.
But we can also find the hope,
The promise that loosens our grip,
That allays our fear of loss.

Everything is already lost,
Already bound to brown,
And falls.
But everything also returns,
Different maybe,
As promised.

Mom was already gone when Dad called me.
“You’d better come up here.”

She had only minutes before exhaled her last breath.
I missed it.

We all missed it.
Even the sitter and the aide, who had just bathed her
And rubbed the homemade lotion I made into the creases of her thin skin,
They missed it.

But I held her hand for an hour.
I unfurled her fingers,
Which for five years had formed fists
Shaking at the Bull.
“Damn you!”

She fought,
She faced her disease full on and so bravely.
She finally let got.

I hated it.
I still hate it and I weep in the fields.

But she modeled the wintering, the unfurling.
And I know I can stand strong in my winter when it comes.

©Pennie Nichols. All Rights Reserved. 2025