Editor’s note: Our Keene State College senior intern Jennika Mullen shares her original poems and some by friends twice a month at InDepthNH.org in the new column ‘Poetic Pens.’ Welcome Alyssa.
By ALYSSA GROSSO
I am a senior at Keene State College majoring in English-Writing and minoring in Multimedia Journalism. This poem is about my grandpa who passed. We had a special relationship that this poem shows through an actual puzzle I used to do throughout my childhood of a plastic bear. My inspiration comes out of the grieving experience I went through, and using that to honor my grandpa by including an important part of what our relationship entailed growing up.
The Missing Piece
By: Alyssa Grosso
Perfectly put together, I wish I could relate. A dull yellow bear staring back at me. Since he passed. When I get off the bus and rush upstairs. You are there. You watch me pass by. Standing still but I know you followed. As I grow older and older. Do you recognize me? Why would pieces of mended plastic chunks acknowledge me? Every time I see you I travel back. Back to throwing mashed peas off my stained highchair onto your tile floors. Tile floors that have been removed by real estate. Tile floors held together that house. A house that belongs to strangers now. Back to playing pretend on the cat piss-stained carpets. A part of me misses that nauseating lingering aroma. Back to cheating at board games as you watched above on the top part of the decaying dark wooden shelf. A shelf that is probably firewood now, or dumpster nourishment.
Now on a new shelf, you lay your paws. A shelf filled with old baby blankets and board games. A shelf filled with memories of when he was here. A perfectly put-together puzzle? No, you are not. You may seem intact as puzzles do. Over the years a piece has been missing. No, not a plastic chunk of a man I looked up to. Oh, little bear you watched me grow. How I wish he could’ve. The piece was missing for years, I started to get frightened. Looking frantically high and low. Not searching the one place where it was hiding. As I look in the mirror now, years later, I have grown and matured. Oh little bear, I have your missing piece. I will keep it safe. You learned you could stand with a missing piece, and so did I.
Jennika’s Thoughts:
I love this poem and the metaphor of the puzzle to describe a period of brokenness and loss. The individual pieces coming together signifies a connection that is both physical and emotional. Putting together the puzzle and the memories of it’s completed image allow her to reunite with her deceased grandfather. The strength of the emotion and this sense of yearning for someone she has lost paints a beautiful picture throughout her writing and lets the reader into her grief. This is one of the reasons I find poetry so powerful, it allows others to understand and experience difficult emotions and situations in such a beautiful way. It is a perfect expression of hardships and sorrow in carefully chosen words and readers can feel the hearts of the poets poured into every syllable of their writing.