The Flutter is Gone - By: Emily Roberts

Silence the songbird and shutter the sky,

Let no wind whisper, let no child cry.

The room is too quiet, the windows too wide,

He will not return to stand by my side.

Stop every bell in the chapel and square,

Let mourning live thick in the weight of the air.

Turn the hourglass, nay, blacken the glass,

Time has no business continuing to pass.

He was the blue pause becoming the night,

The fire that became my reason to fight,

My step on the stair, our hands on the cup

He was the reason the white sun rose up.

Let the stars curdle in the vault of the skies,

Let the tides lie down and refuse to rise.

Pack up the seasons and silence the sea

Nothing is left that matters to me.

Please give a detailed explanation about the meaning and main idea of this poem.

The Flutter is Gone is a poem about grief so overwhelming that it warps the natural order. It asks how birds can keep singing, how bells can keep ringing, how tides, seasons, and stars can continue their ancient routines when a relationship so fundamental has ended. The world’s calm persistence feels wrong, almost cruel. Everything appears painfully normal when it should, by all logic of the heart, freeze in recognition of what has been lost.

At its core, the poem captures the moment when grief becomes so consuming that the universe feels indifferent, and the speaker’s only remaining agency is protest: an insistence that the world stop, just for a moment, to acknowledge the magnitude of their sorrow.

Please explain your writing and thought process regarding this poem.

The poem leans toward iambic tetrameter, with most lines falling in the 10–12-syllable range. Because of that rhythmic structure, many of the word choices were shaped by sound and cadence as much as meaning, with several revisions as I worked to balance clarity, emotional weight, and lyrical flow. Like much of my writing, it served as a form of emotional outlet.

Why did you choose to write this poem?

I missed people who were in my past but not in my present.

Do you have any tips or anything to share with the youth writers who may be reading this?

“Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”

― Franz Kafka