Entries on Heartbreak

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2006-2007 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

One day you will be gone
cleaned from my system
emptied from my heart
no trace of your spine in my blood
But for now you’re lingering in strange places I can hardly describe
Traces of you can be found everywhere
scraps of you torn off and dangling in the caves of my eyes
the basement of my soul

You’re still here as much as I would like to cut you out
I’ve erased your number from my phone
a symbolic gesture that I never expect to speak to you again
An obvious lie
anything to tangibly take action
to recover from the tidal wave of loss
that hits me nightly while I sleep in a well
of sorrow and broken memories that fade far down the line but refuse to disappear

A forever dwindling light that keeps burning and torturing as it slips upstream

I will forget you
But for now
as I try to reconcile the loss
I have terrible dreams where you break up with me again
like re cutting the open wound whose golden flesh is just beginning to crackle and harden in tiny regions
You tell me you never loved me
And you say it with great pride and determination
and I believe it in the dream
I even believe it now
in the consciousness of a perfectly sunny day

I believe you never loved me.
Isn’t that strange?

Just thinking it makes my stomach curdle
Just believing it makes me feel as though I’ve actually died
It’s the only way to process what has actually happened
It’s the only way to explain what you’ve put me through
I told myself this story
and now I have to believe it

I loved you
and you never loved me
and that’s the only way one could put someone through such pain
is to be void of love for them, possibly for anything

These dreams help me care for the grief stricken soldiers
who can’t walk only crawl
and push their way through the blades of grass who have called my heart their home for centuries now

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Today I caught my reflection in a pane of glass
and saw the pain in my face
The wear and tear that perpetual pain and crying have caused me
The ways in which the incessant grief and sorrow have changed my face

I look wiser
delicate and older
despite my youthful face of 16
I am now a woman who has lived through her own personal tragedy
And I can see in my eyes the mountains my heart is still trying to climb through

Like a pirate swept away from the salt and waves
I have changed
and am restless from the throbbing vacancies of the sea
Its bitter taste has left me weak...

I want to love again
I want to wake up and repeat the dreams from my head
and store them in my spine


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I wonder how you’ve moved on...
What cells in your body have departed from the way I taste and look and smell
and what figments of you have progressed into things and notions I can’t fathom

This weight, which has caused seizures in my heart
and eruptions in the basement of my lips, grows heavy

I miss you
I want you
I love you
dare I say I need you…

But now as time has progressed steadily
and with the dissonance of dreary soldiers on parade
It’s even less clear where your love lies
Do you think of me when you’re with other women with shallow pools for hearts?

Why won’t you come back to me and tell me you love me?
That you will never leave me again
You’re sorry
Hold me for a year until the trauma has subsided
while I sleep in your arms and the pain is drained from my corpse
one vein at a time
Your love like a needle extracting the sorrow
Your skin like a warm forest in my heart
Your voice a place to sing my tears to sleep

The ruffles in my bed are warm from the dreams I have where you pretend to care
I still see you in my bedroom kissing me in the spaces of gold and dust you left behind
I still hear you through the waves in my windows as they break open
and beg for colder nights where our love lies in the snow
and the world hasn’t left me behind


I still touch you in twilight where the pain is steady and throbs gently in my throat like a ship moving backwards
I still know your face beaming yellow song that tastes of gold when it’s melting

There is a vast thick river of green earth and blood
and the tears of saffron swallows charging below me
forcing wet beads to bleed from my eyes
that sear my skin on their way down to touch my swollen feet

The acrylic lies I tell myself don’t work
the vacant room in my head still spins with wet daggers and sinking ships

The sailors have retired to their wives
and sleep with brandy smiles
while you still tread the thickness of morphine waves and count the swans that spill your seed
while the sky closes in from the ground

And what happens when the pain stops?
What do I feel then?
If it ever stops
Will it ever stop?


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lately I have been feeling as if the orbits of soldiers have dragged me
into a swollen mine where my dreams are left to mold and tingle
in what’s left of me

My body slowly fades
perhaps trying to escape the war
and find quiet in a cave

I see myself through a telescope perverse and undetermined to rest
falling out of sync with the drummers who line the streets waiting for the waves

The roads are tangled
and the children play in salt mines with bombs and gold
holding their breath

The pedals of pianos are spotted and chipping
My name is called out to me
and it recharges my heart

I could do this forever
with or without love
but it’s harder
when it’s easier to find the poison that makes you real
and converting lithium from love has never been discussed

Trim the glass between your dreams
and expect to find what you left behind
While your flying with the circus
the ocean opens up for you

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HOPE 2008 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I’m remembering what those first months felt like
The first five months,
first six months
How incredibly different they were
How incredibly different I was

Every day I woke up and died again
The dreary hopelessness that flooded my membranes
swallowed my heart hourly

There was no escape or relief
And the knowledge of being so thoroughly trapped
only added to the miserable river I was drowning in

Now I am alive again
Human,
very human
And the pain I can finally say with conviction
has in fact strengthened me,
has truly made me a better person
has deepened every fiber of my flesh
spirit and soul.

I think I can now say
that I am actually grateful for the experience
Maybe having one more like it in my life
wouldn’t actually be such a terrible thing
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------