The Coal Miner’s Wife, a poem by Jamie B at Spillwords.com

The Coal Miner’s Wife

written by: Jamie B

Certainly. Here’s a more detailed and visceral version, focusing on his life as a coal miner and how his drinking worsened over time, leading to his death, from the perspective of his wife standing at his grave:

I stand here, clutching the cold earth,
watching it swallow the man I loved—
a man forged in the darkness of the tunnels,
where the air was thick with coal dust and despair.

You worked underground,
your hands scarred from the pick and shovel,
your lungs filled with the ash of a dying earth.
Days blurred into nights beneath the surface,
each shift a battle against the weight of stone and sorrow.

I remember the way you came home—
exhausted, eyes hollow, voice raspy—
trying to hide the ache that no amount of coal dust could cover.

As the years went on, the silence grew louder.
You turned to drink—
a bottle became your refuge, your escape,
your way of silencing the ghosts of the tunnels.

You drank to forget the darkness,
but it seeped into your bones.
The alcohol numbed the pain,
but also hollowed out what was left of you.

I watched you drown—
slowly, painfully—
each shot a blow to the fragile hope we once had.

Your body grew frail,
your mind frayed at the edges,
until the night you took your own life,
a final descent into that endless black.

Now, I stand here, broken and silent,
at the grave of the man I loved—
a miner lost in the depths,
a soul overwhelmed by shadows and spirits—
gone too soon, swallowed by the darkness he fought so hard against.

And I wonder, in the quiet of this moment,
if he ever knew how much I loved him,
if he ever felt the weight of my tears,
or if the darkness inside him was just too much to bear.

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Jamie B

My name is Jamie. I work in construction but in my spare time I love reading and trying to write at any opportunity I have to do so. I enjoy writing anything from short stories to poems.