Comparing Grief?
by Stephanie Marottek

If your child died
when she was 5
and mine before her birth,
does that mean that your grief is more validated,
more deserved?
Your daughter lived and
breathed and laughed.
Mine never got that joy.
So are you more deserving
of sympathy and understanding, than I?
For if this were so,
then another, who's son
died at age 15,
her grief is more and she has more
right
to cry than you or I.
Do you see
how silly you are?
How uncomparable grief is?
So don't tell me that I have
less of a loss,
don't tell me yours is worse!
My grief is my own
and yours is your own.
Let it be
and don't compare
the value of a life.

Mocking E.P.T.
by Stephanie Marottek

The E.P.T. mocks me
from the bathroom counter.
Negative.
Negative.
Negative.
It silently taunts me as I
desperately hope another line
will magically appear.
It ignores me,
flashing it's one lonely pink line.
Reminding me of my failure
to conceive,
rubbing it in, grinding the salt
into the sore, open wound
of my still broken heart.
It does not care about
my feelings, hopes and desires.
All it cares about it
showing me the empty spot
where a positive line would be,
if my womb weren't still
achingly empty.

Editor's Note:
Stephanie is a prolific poet who has been kind enough to share her work with all of us on the KotaPress Yahoo Discussion Group. I wanted to thank her again for letting me share some of that work here in the Loss Journal, too!