Finding Poetics in Journal-like Prose

I so want poetry to guide my fingertips to touch the liberating letters on the keyboard, but I find the metaphors are stuck somewhere. I am unable to wrap my mind around poetic images, which often have been my magic rug taking me from sadness or confusion to serenity or clarity. I have never experienced the event of a dying parent. Many people have and I seek them out to find connection and understanding. I suppose other's experiences with such a horrific situation have become my poetics, my means to pull myself up and out of this haze. I cannot seem to articulate how I feel, which is sometimes more frustrating than feeling.

I am like a mountain for my mother who is having to accept the unfortunate fate of her husband, a man she has been married to for almost 39 years. 39 years! I love my father. He has supported me unconditionally. But I cannot imagine losing a life partner of 39 years. My mother apologized to me yesterday for leaning on me. I am okay with her leaning on me because she needs someone as she transitions from my father to herself. I am saddened by her feelings of loneliness, a void no one can fill but herself.

If only I could find the poetics to express what rests in my core. If only I could release the suffocation and fly away like a hot air balloon. Instead, I act like a robot--calm, collected, mechanical. When alone I turn into rain, falling hard to the ground collecting into a puddle only to be stepped on by the foot of life.

Maybe if I journal like this, I will find my way through this crazy maze and come out more alive than when I entered. (My children are waking up; time to morph back into a mountain.)