Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
I have always searched
for the blessing
buried beneath the tragedy.
Some small mercy,
some quiet kindness,
some reason to believe
that even the worst of things
might leave something good behind.
Because without hope,
what is there?
How does a heart
endure the unbearable
if it cannot believe
there is something
on the other side of it?
And so I search.
Through the wreckage
of everything that was,
through the silence
where a voice once lived,
through all the tomorrows
that will never come.
I turn sorrow over
in trembling hands,
looking for the place
where something beautiful
might still be hiding.
Perhaps the blessing
is not meant
for those who remain.
Perhaps it belongs
to the one who left.
Perhaps there is no more pain,
no more disappointment,
no more carrying
the terrible weight
of being alive.
Perhaps somewhere,
beyond all our knowing,
there is a peace
so complete
that even longing
has forgotten its name.
Oh, how I need
that to be true.
Because if there is no blessing
in the leaving,
and none in being left,
then what are we
to make of all this love
that could not save us?
What are we to do
with the empty chairs,
the unfinished conversations,
the ordinary afternoons
we would give our lives
to have again?
They say
there is a reason
for everything.
But I have searched
every corner of this sorrow
and found no reason
worth the cost.
Only absence.
Only the terrible arithmetic
of a world
that keeps taking
and calls it living.
Still, I search.
Not because I believe
there must be an answer,
but because I am afraid
of what will become of me
if I stop looking.
Because hope
has always been
the little light
I carried into darkness,
and I do not know
how to go on
without it.
So I tell myself
there must be something.
Some mercy.
Some meaning.
Some small, impossible blessing
waiting beyond
what I can bear to understand.
And I reach for it
with everything
I have left.
But what if grief
is not a passage
to somewhere brighter?
What if there is
no hidden kindness,
no beautiful reason,
no peace waiting
to make the suffering
worthwhile?
What if some things
are simply lost,
and all the love
in all the world
cannot make them
anything else?
I have spent my life
believing
there must be a blessing.
And now,
standing in the ruins
of that belief,
I am beginning
to wonder
if perhaps
there isn't one.
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Poetry by Britt Wolfe:
What happens when grief becomes so consuming that even sadness begins to disappear? Numb and Colourless is a haunting exploration of the emotional emptiness that follows profound loss, when the world continues in all its magnificent colour, but nothing feels beautiful, terrible, meaningful, or worth anticipating anymore. It is a deeply desolate reflection on the frightening space between existing and living, where love becomes something remembered rather than felt, hope loses its purpose, and even the person we once were begins to feel like a stranger. For anyone who has ever discovered that the opposite of happiness isn't always sadness, but something infinitely more unsettling: the absence of feeling anything at all.