Emulation for Emily Dickinson’s poem, Because I Could Not Stop For Death*

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Loss is a blanket that settles slowly down

and numbs you from the rest of the world.

 

Grief is your perfume in which I slowly drown

And your favourite Crown Royal in a glass

that I swirled around for hours

because I am too young to drink it.

 

Denial is the screaming in my head that you aren’t really gone

because I have never known life without you.

Depression is sleepiness prolonged

because if life is so short then I have nothing to do

and I don’t want to do anything if you aren’t here to see it.

 

I don’t know where you are, or where I am.

The picture of us is on my desk,

but the smiles you gave me are nowhere near my lips.

I guess they died with the both of us.

 

I saw us slipping and falling from sight,

I tried to reach for you,

I heard myself call for you,

And that’s when I realized,

That you didn’t want me to.

You didn’t want me to catch you.

 

You weren’t even bumped,

You weren’t slipping at all,

You jumped,

Holding on to whatever we had left,

And taking it with you.

 

You would think

I would have given up on you,

As you jumped.

Catching my eyes as you fell,

And dropping the little pieces we had left of each other

So you could land on them

or maybe,

destroy them for good.

 

But I couldn’t.

I couldn’t forget the moments we shared,

for me, the good really did outweigh the bad.

I could not stop loving you.

 

And so,

Because I could not stop for death,

You opened its door

And hoped right in,

killing us,

along with yourself.

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This was a piece I wrote for a poetry seminar in my AP English Class, for an emulation of Emily Dickinson poem, Because I Could Not Stop for Death. The idea behind the poem was love being lost through the metaphor of love being killed, along with the idea of betrayal and murder of love being shared between two people. Through this poem, we are able to see the pain of love, not to mention the uncertainty, as well as what happens when love is being and love is lost. The beginning of the poem is shown to describe the stages of pain and losing something/someone, loss, denial, depression and grief, as well as shown in the majority of the rest of the poem, confusion and not being able to understand or comprehend why one loses love that seemed so genuine, is lost in such a harsh way. I was able to use Emily Dickinson’s idea behind her poem of almost personifying death near the end, and giving loss and love the spotlight in my piece. I found this piece to be one that shows the other side of love, the side where not everything works out, where you end up losing, and not being able to comprehend or even recognize the person you love anymore.

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