The Immensity Of A Word Poem by Melati Hussein

Are you aware of the vastness of the word bereft
It is not adorned with curlicues
It is immense

Not like an ocean
With its possibility of gentle movement
And ebbing tides

It’s a black hole
A vortex that sucks you in slowly
Disorientating

A nothingness that eats at the heart and soul
Exposed white, fleshless bones

Homeless, graveless

That feeling that hands contain,
That can only be described as the memory of loss via touch,
Fingertips that tingle with emptiness.

Ears in perpetual alert
Hearing the phone ring
But it isn’t, and there is no one there.

Being bereft
Barely a being, ghost like
A foggy image of a has been

Bereft, a beautiful sound
It is immense
It is the stripping and taking
It is savage pain