The thing about grief is that it doesn’t matter
how wide-open and endlessly it stretches out before you
or how mute and dry and upright it sits in your mouth,
or how beautiful and violent and like spectator sport it becomes
because the thing about grief is, like all hooded forms of love,
it is ingenuous and always unsentimental about the future.
Charika Swanepoel is a South African poet and literary scholar. She is currently pursuing her MA. in English Poetry at the North-West University. Some of her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in and on platforms such as the Kalahari Review, New Contrast, Prufrock, Aerodrome, Literator, Glass Poetry etc.
She is also reader at Helen: A Literary Magazine, Frontier Poetry, and E&GJ Press. Charika also launched Laurel Magazine (www.laurelmagazine.co.za) in 2017.
You can see more of her work on csswanepoel.wordpress.com and follow her on Twitter @CharikaSW or Instagram @charikaswanepoel.