“Don’t Call It Grieving” is in constant conversation with the modes of formality and performance of losing. Each formal decision and subsequent departure tells its own story of loss and obsesses over the question: Is all loss equal, and what do we owe to those we choose to leave behind?

The collection of poems in this thesis explores both the kinds of loss we know and those we don’t have a word for. Form attempts to express what can’t be said—what words are subsequently found serve to continuously shape around absence. Whether a lost loved one, a friend, or a home—these poems fill in the space with stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance.