On Ohio & Grief

This is a playlist of poems about grief by Ohio poets. I don’t know if the folks in Iowa think about grief as much as Ohioans think about grief. My entire life, I’ve lived in the Buckeye State, which means I have been buried by heavy winters when it should be spring, and I have driven down roads where billboards tell me hell exists. I don’t know if the Midwestern joke about Iowa, Ohio, and Idaho all being the same states makes sense, but the highways enveloped in corn in the former states hints that it might. Iowa is where I found myself driving through Iowa City, my mother next to me, as we passed by grandparents out with their grandkids, and you could feel the disconnect in our car, the way we couldn’t relate anymore. All of our loved ones have come and gone. Our AirBnB was owned by a woman going through a breakup, her ex having taken on of their two dogs, but you couldn’t feel the weight of heartbreak in the walls. At home, each time I walk into my own house, once owned by my grandparents for over four decades, there is a pressure that I can feel. Grief, when you boil it down to its purest form, is different for everyone. I can’t go anywhere without trying to feel everyone else’s, even if it presents itself in the lightest ways. There’s nothing but corn and grief in Iowa and Ohio, but everything feels so much heavier at home.