The Shape of Such Things

In the midst of the release of my first novel (Hey, hey! Seamless book plug! Buy it here), I have been working on a second short story collection. This year I haven’t really been in the mood to submit anywhere. I’m back to writing just for the sake of writing, which has resulted in the kind of stories that happen when bereft of editorial audience or oversight.

In other words, this shit is weird.

I’ve been writing work that is for my exploration and pleasure rather than trying to write for a specific publication or thematic concept and it has been oddly freeing. It’s also produced some work that is inherently weird. Though there hasn’t been a conscious theme, this second collection has (subconsciously) become a meditation on grief. Which means that as I am writing and editing, and getting a sense of where I want to go story-telling wise, I am enveloped by my exploration of my own continuous grief.

Let me first say that I cannot grieve in public. I’m sure a lot of people find this off-putting, but if you’re looking for someone capable of grieving with you during a loss in public, at a funeral, at a memorial, at whatever, I am not that person. I’ve never been capable and I remain incapable of sharing my vulnerability in this way.

That does not mean I do not grieve. I feel that grief is eternal. It never really ends, but that through time it changes shape. I am still grieving for people and pets of lost, and they permeate my absent and unstructured thoughts. That memory becomes its own unwitting trap. Or that my grief ebbs and flows, it sharpens and bludgeons depending on the occasion.

In some ways grief is a language unto itself. That it spoken in story. And in order for me to tell you of my grief, to give words to constancy and ache, I must first tell you everything about everyone. I need to tell you all the things about them so you may come to love them, and so that the loss is sharp. Enough to wound you so you can feel that same pain.

But I don’t share my personal grief; I give you the shadow of it in story. The trails of memory that encompass joy followed by loss. The shape of my grief is a living thing, tendrilled and seeping. And it gives me another language with which to share it.

And, I do.

See you on the flip side amigxs. 

    -La Queta