Instead of torturing you with yet another poem this month, I’m going to tell you about a chapbook I’ve been working on with the goal of having the first draft done by the end of the year.
First of all, a poetry chapbook is about 20-40 pages long. The number of poems depends on how long the poems are. I’m a short poem writer. Most of my poems can be contained on one page. So, in my chapbook writing endeavor, I’m looking at about twenty poems just to be safe.
After my friend and roommate Carrie unexpectedly passed away last December, I ended up using poetry to channel a lot of my grief. In the immediate aftermath, scribbling my feelings down let me keep functioning. It was like a release valve. It kept me from exploding into a useless ball of guilt, tears, and snotty Kleenex (but trust me, there was still a lot of all three).
Early in 2025, I decided it would be a good idea to focus this grief and poetry into a chapbook. Purposely write my pain as a way to process and cope. In a way, somewhere in my grief-addled brain, I thought it would be a good way to honor and memorialize Carrie. She always thought she’d be discarded and forgotten, and I didn’t want that to happen. In retrospect, maybe centering an entire chapbook on my own grief wasn’t the best way to do that, but it gave me something to do.
I do believe that it helped quite a bit. I do think I ended up processing more of my grief than I thought I would. However, I also reached a point where I didn’t want to write about it anymore. I was tired of poking at that wound. I didn’t want to pick at that scab anymore. I wanted it to heal. I was afraid to touch it. I could lie and say that I was worried that repeatedly touching it might cause it to get infected, but the truth was that I was tired of the sting and I was afraid it might hurt as badly as it first did if I prodded hard enough. Honestly, it probably would.
So, I stopped thinking about it, stopped writing about it, and kind of ignored it.
I didn’t look at the poems I had written for months. I flinched just thinking about it. And I put off finishing the chapbook so I wouldn’t have to deal with the discomfort of revisiting that intense grief.
So here I am at the end of the year and the first draft of that chapbook is still unfinished. It’s looming on my To Do List and I’m more uncomfortable with the idea of leaving the chapbook unfinished than I am with making myself finish it. Because by not finishing this first draft -even if I never revise it, even if nothing comes of it- feels like I’m letting Carrie down once again.
I’ve got a few weeks until 2026 and I’m going to finish it. I’ve only got a couple more poems left to write. I can do it.
For Carrie, I’ll get it done.
This past Sunday would have been 
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