An olden man in a golden hat 
Once asked my brazen, sodden self 
"What is it that you grieve?"
At the time I had found the question unbecoming. 
Strange, odd, and unusually demanding. 
"What do I grieve?" I'd parroted. 
"What do you grieve?" He'd repeated. 
It was not a question one would ask as he did
With his round glasses at the end of his nose
His eyes wide, his mouth quirked
As though sharing secrets among friends. 
"I have no one to grieve. All is well."
He had done it again. 
Cocked his head and smiled at me. 
As though I had cracked a joke at him. 
One meant for him to laugh about. 
Again I thought to myself. 
How unbecoming of himself. 
Then he leaned closer, pushing his glasses up. 
As though about to bestow knowledge unheard of. 
Instead, he asked again, "What do you grieve?"
It was perhaps not knowledge unheard of 
Nor exactly what he said 
But how he had said it. 
Peering in my soul as though undoing what made me me. 
To get to what lay inside that lay unbeknownst to even me. 
The words ring inside my head. 
To this day, his voice etched into my mind. 
What do I grieve?
Words may have failed me then
But the list formed inside my mind
As though it had been there all along. 
"I grieve what is to be lost," I had said to him. 
"The moments to be had that never were. 
The words to be shared that never left my heart. 
The dreams that once lived that I've poured soil over. 
The life I gave up to have the one I have. 
The parts of me I sold to have the parts of the ones I love. 
I grieve all that I have and all that I lost.
I grieve all that could have been
And all that I would have lost.
I grieve a life I've never lived.
The people I never met.
The home I never had.
I grieve what used to be.
What should have been.
I am grieving something.
All the time."
As if a dam God built inside my heart
Came crumbling down, again unbecomingly. 
Without its sordid divinity 
As if put there by some mortal being. 
With the fall of the dam 
Came an emptiness, loud and big. 
So resounding it swallowed me whole. 
As if grief had been a long-time friend
One that I'd been reunited with. 
But through all the pain, the olden man
Sat frozen, his crooked smile still prevalent. 
Except his golden hat now sat
Between his fingers, turning brown with age. 
As if his hat had aged with weight
Of all the grief I'd just sprouted out. 
And then like the wind, the old man was gone. 
His hat sitting on the countertop. 
Brown turned to black 
And heavy as bricks. 
Each inch of it now held my grief. 
The ones I'd carried for many years now. 
And as I sat there, I was left wondering 
Of what became of the unbecoming 
Olden man and his missing golden hat.

Syeda Erum Noor is devoted to learning about the craft of writing and is an avid reader who can talk endlessly about the magic of books. Reach her at @syedaerumnoorwrites.