Hello

I won’t lie. That’s a hard word to say sometimes.

I wish I lived in a culture that used the same word to mean both hello and goodbye. It’d make it easier, wouldn’t it?

I’m saying hello now because the last post I made was Goodbye. And it was me saying goodbye to my mother. More than a month ago. Saying goodbye sucks. When my kids leave to go back to their own lives. When I hang up the phone with my father now. When a friend I’ve waited a long time to see leaves again. I hate that word. That strangely cheerful sounding, heart-wrenching, chillingly lonely word.

Goodbye.

And yet, having said goodbye to the woman I loved most in this world, somehow it’s been even harder to say hello again to all of you. Maybe it’s because it feels like everything I say echoes in a hollow space. (As a poet, I appreciate that hello and hollow rhyme so well…) But I’m saying hello now because I know there is more to be done here. I have plans for National Poetry Month in April that include this blog. So I will say the word that, strangely, begins with a syllable that describes where I sometimes feel I am stuck.

Hello.

Two words, so very different in construction, not at all alike in sound,

So very difficult to say.

Hello

By Michelle Garren Flye

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A whisper of a word over an abandoned grave—

soft breezes blow spring grasses around

and I am searching for redemption.

Courage, the wind whispers, try to be brave,

don’t hesitate, reach for the crown

and your place in life with strengthen.

But in the end, I am naught but a slave,

helpless and a bit of a letdown—

even if I have your attention.

Hello is too much, I can’t do it, I say,

my face marked by an anguished frown,

Goodbye hurt too much; hello is no fun.

Hello, from me. Sometimes I forget to smile. Selfie by Michelle Garren-Flye.