By Diana Raab

Haunted By Images

Everyday I wake up haunted
by the image of finding
my grandmother dead fifty years hence

she sixty, me ten.
I roll over in this unmade bed
and flinch at the image of her
placing my fingers on those keys

of her Remington typewriter
perched on her vanity, the room
beside mine where I found her—

dead from an overdose
of sleeping pills, her ashen skin
beneath her blonde disheveled hair

with a Graham Greene novel splayed
across her exposed abdomen and sheer
curtains swaying in the full-mooned window beside.

Today, while reading her journal
I swallowed her pain,
orphaned at the fragile age of twelve
in war-torn Poland.

I take my well of courage from writing
which also offered grandma solace
and now nurtures my own precious peace.

Diana Raab, Ph.D., is a memoirist, blogger, psychologist, workshop leader, thought provoker, and award-winning author of 8 books and over 500 articles and published poems. Her passion and expertise is writing for healing, transformation and empowerment. She has been writing since the age of 10 when her mother gave her her first journal to cope with her grandmother’s suicide. She blogs for Psychology Today, The Huffington Post, BrainSpeak, and PsychAlive. For more information, visit: www.dianaraab.com. You can follow her on Twitter as @dianaraab.

Cover image by Wikimedia Commons user Edaen.