Grief
by Melany Urena
That old dog sits at my ankle,
small and yappy, with a bite
sinking dull pain into the bone.
The wretched thing looks up at me
with bulging eyes and yellowed fangs,
a rib cage pressed beneath a sack of skin.
But in the night, grief no longer
bares its teeth.
It whimpers, and I know
it is starving for love
that won’t return.
Melany Urena is an undergraduate biology student at Montclair State University, with a deep reverence for poetry. Her work seeks to inquire into the human experience of loss and transformation through language that can be felt, not just read. “Grief” is her first published work.