Brokensoulsreborn - Tumblr Posts

I want

I want

I want

Hands

Palms

Fingertips

I want them

On all the softest parts

Of me

I want them

On my cheek

In my hair

On my hips

I want them

On my chest

Where the flesh

Is thinnest

Between this world

And my heart

I want

Hands

In mine

Fingertips

Along my spine

Palms

Doing what they do best

Holding

I want

Hands

I want

To be

Held

- "what do you want from me?"

The night is always young somewhere

The darkness

Still a child

That may yet be taught

How to hold love

In the spaces between its teeth

And life is funny that way.

In the way she gave me the ability to speak, only to render me speechless so often.

In the way she gave me a voice, and a dread of using it.

The way she gave me all the words in the world, and feelings none of them could describe.

And life is funny that way.

In the way she sends me desire for those who will never desire me.

In the way she gives me a heart made of grasping palms and nothing to hold.

The way she shows me religion then baptizes me in doubt when I most need to trust in something other than myself. And in this way she keeps me close. For what do I have if I do not have her?

And life is funny that way.

In the way she gives me the world to write about and yet sends me poems about you over and over and over.

In the way she compels me to write about forever and eternity and the vastness of space, while hypnotizing me with my mortality on a heart string swaying in front of me always.

The way she asks me to write about love and gives me only tastes of it. Watches amused as I pen page after page trying to recreate a feast on paper. Trying to quench the ravenous appetite she left me with, only to witness me fail time and time again. Smiling as I go to bed starving.

And life is funny that way.

In the way she gives me the will and yet no way.

The way she teaches me how to want, but not how to have, not how to keep.

The way she makes it my deepest desire to be known completely and yet my greatest fear.

The way she gifts me already broken promises.

And life is funny that way

By which I mean

Life is a cruel mistress

And every piece of my shattered heart

Is hers

You taught me a softer way to love. Which is to say I have always loved like wildfire. Always loved vicious. All or nothing. Overwhelming and unbearable and so hard it hurts. Always loved a war of desire leaving my heart a ravaged battlefield with thick scar tissue in the shape of words they never said. But we burnt out. Which is to say I fell out of love with you in the summer sun in the middle of a movie theatre parking lot and it had nothing to do with you. And I did not realize this for years in the aftermath of this heartbreak. It had nothing to do with you. For you had always been you. It was me. For it is always me and the moment I am disillusioned regarding exactly what I am deserving of. Regarding exactly what you are offering and what I had misinterpreted your open palms and open smile for. Which is to say I fell out of love with you to save myself. In an act of self-preservation. To keep loving you would have killed me. So I stopped. Which is an oversimplification of the process of withdrawal but I did. I fell out of love with you. And I am better for it.

Which is to say when I did, touching you ached less. Your name in my mouth didn't sting so much. Every time you talked about someone else it never cut deep enough to leave a mark. And then it stopped cutting at all. And then I started being happy for you. And now, all this time later, I suppose when I call you my friend I mean it. Which is to say I never text you first anymore and it isn't even on purpose. Which is to say we talk when we have time, usually when you are home from school for the break, and I laugh like renewal, but never with enough joy that it threatens to rip my seams. Which is to say I have not fallen in love with anyone since you but I'm okay with that. I know I could. Which is to say I do not rearrange plans when you call and I do not particularly care about seeming intelligent to you anymore. Or beautiful. Or talented. Or worthy. I don't worry about keeping you coming back. Because I know you'll return for us eventually. And we'll pick up where we left off. Like we cannot help but meet again where you last left the person I used to be.

But every time we are together for more than a handful of moments I am in love with you again. And my heartbeat syncs with yours. And when you look at me I want you to keep looking. And when you touch me I want you to keep touching. But you never do. And I am practiced in this. So this time you walk me all the way home and it doesn't even get my hopes up. This time you sing to me at my doorstep and I do not flinch. Remind myself it is not your fault your kindness works like this. That this is just who you are. Because I will walk inside and peek out the glass for you to look back and you won't. And I will remember in the reflection that I am no one special to you. And I will fall out of love again, just like I have done a dozen times before with you. And I will go upstairs and take a shower humming the lyrics to the song you last played me and when I step out of the stream of water, my desire will be washed down the drain. And I will cease loving you until next time.

You taught me a softer way to love. Because I think you taught me there are some people we will never fall all the way out of love with. And that can be okay sometimes. As long as you are not destroying yourself with longing. Some things cannot be helped.

~ #3 : reflections on falling out of unrequited love with him

Which is to say I fell out of love with you to save myself. In an act of self-preservation. To keep loving you would have killed me. So I stopped. And I think this is why you were the person out of all the persons I've ever loved that I got to keep in my life even after. Because loving you was growing up. Was realizing just because you can't have the entire good thing doesn't mean you have to deny yourself the piece offered. That a slice of lovely doesn't have to be the end of you. Was learning to make do with what I was given with a smile and a thank you. Was learning to be grateful. Because we don't always get to have what we want. And we can't keep throwing tantrums by having panic attacks in the bathroom over accidental glances and unintentionally broken promises.

Loving you was growing up. Was realizing some people are nice to everybody. They have a talent for making people feel wanted, but this does not mean that they want you, and that is okay. That is okay. Their kindness is not their fault. Loving you was growing up. Was realizing people are busy. People's lives don't stop because you have chosen this inopportune time to become madly infatuated with them. They don't text you back. They don't love you back. They don't think about you. They forget to ask about your day. They say things that hurt even when that wasn't what they meant to do. And you grow up. You brush it off. You realize this is not a reflection of your self worth. You stop expecting people to fulfill what you dreamed them up to be. You let them just be them. And you learn to let this be enough.

Because loving you was growing up. To keep loving you would have killed me, and I realized for the first time how childish it was to disintegrate into a hurricane of self-destruction when rejection was so softly gifted. To ache until I tore like it would change anything. And I suppose growing up doesn't have to mean wanting to live, but it at least meant trying. Which is to say I fell out of love with you to save myself. In an act of self-preservation. To keep loving you would have killed me. So I stopped. Which is an oversimplification of the process of withdrawal but I did. I fell out of love with you. And I am better for it.

~ #4: reflections on falling out of unrequited love with him

(Original excerpt removed from '#3: reflections on falling out of unrequited love with him')

I met you when I was young. We were both young, but now I see it. I was 15 and you were older and kind and spent smiles like they cost you nothing. Maybe it was this illusion of abundance that originally tipped me into the fall but you were everything I never thought could exist for me.

My best friend introduced us in passing. I met you mid-morning in the middle of the week in the middle of a bustling hallway. Maybe this was the first sign that we would never be anything all the way. You made a joke about my name but it was all in good fun and to hear my name on your tongue made my palms prick. All I saw was your smile, brilliant enough to blind. It hurt to look at you too long, but I did it anyway. I was always a little bit of a masochist I suppose. You will learn this soon enough, when I love you so hard it hurts. When I manage to turn this soft thing between us sharp. But in fact, you won't. You won't learn this. And perhaps that is where we begin to fall apart. Or when I do. I begin to fall apart. Because we never seemed to do much of anything to you. We never seemed to touch you at all. While we tore me apart. Or I did. I guess it was always me doing the breaking, wasn't it?

We leave after last period to get lunch from the place near school you swear has the best fries. We miss 3 busses trying to figure out the route, the last one is on me because I can't run in flats with my school bag. While I walk, you sprint across the parking lot to buy our tickets but we're already too late. I don't want to watch the movie even if it's only 5 minutes in. I want to leave. I've wanted to leave since we waited for your food in awkward silence for 15 minutes but I swallowed and called it first date nerves even though we never said it was a date and I know now that it most definitely wasn't. And that's how things always were between us, weren't they? Me being let down by my own expectations of you. Me taking your kindness and taking and taking and taking even what wasn't there?

You let me pick what we watch instead since we're already here and pay for my ticket. I return the cost to you in the dark of the theatre. The movie is bad. In fact it's awful. I lean away from you and bite my nails during the sex scenes I didn't expect from the trailer. I wince every time I hear you shift, so sure you hate me as much as you hate the film, quietly begging for it to be over. We leave after it's done. I apologize. I didn't know it would be that terrible. You tell me we totally could have caught the original one we came to see and I nod, holding back tears that taste like shame. But you mean nothing by it.

It's summer, warm and sticky, walking across the parking lot.

I fell out of love with you then.

I didn't know it in that instant but looking back on it, this is the exact moment.

I realize there is nothing here. Nothing between us but space. There is nothing here, and the question is seeded if there ever was. The thought takes many weeks to root and bud. Months to flower and come to fruition. But it is planted here. Here, I keep searching for a feeling of comfort even if just in your presence but there is nothing to find. My stomach turns at my mother's missed calls, she's wondering where I am, who I'm with, and I'm panicking because I am still young. You offer me nothing but shrugged shoulders and it is worse because I know you mean well. Or rather that you mean nothing by it. And suddenly I know that I need you to say something. I need you to say something that matters right now. Or there will be nothing to come back to tomorrow.

But you don't. You don't walk me home. You walk me to the street across from my father's apartment building. Nod. One hand wave. See you later. Walk back across the street before the light can turn red again. You don't look back. And of course, I only know this because I look back. Stare after you. Not heartbroken yet. But gently being let down. For the next few days I would rather not think about you. I try many times to remake how it happened in my head but I'm grasping at threads. There is too little material to sew a new tapestry memory from stray comments and wayward touches.

After this butterflies were not summoned at the sound of your name, funny how easy delicate things die isint it. After this, I did not feel the tug of your orbit's gravity pulling me closer to you in a crowded room. Your words sounded less and less divine to me, I think this is because I started hearing what you were saying instead of what I wanted you to be saying. After this, the poetry about you turned sad, then angry, then ran mostly dry. There were no more tears shed over you in the bathroom around the corner from the theatre classroom because your promises were pretty coloured tissue paper flowers to me now. Good for decoration and conversation, but they would tear easy, for they were never meant to last. Never crafted to be put to the test.

We try again a few times. Every once in a while I find you at my locker at the end of the day and we try again. Painfully awkward, but we try again and again and every time I think it's over you're there again. Here is where you instill in me the inability to get over you all the way. You do it by accident. Or at least mean nothing by it. And I begin to understand this the hard way. It's hard because everything means something to me. For I have spent my life trying to squeeze enough from the nothings cast my way.

You ask me out of the blue if I'd like to go for bubble tea and I say I've never tried it so we do. My mother is at work and my sister is in school and no one is at home to expect me and I feel sickeningly giddy at the little rebellion. The silence is only half as uncomfortable as before. The other half-emptied of expectation and filled with acceptance. But the place is closed and this time I laugh at the inconvenience fate keeps gifting us. I tell myself it's a sign. One I'll look at later. We go somewhere else. Somewhere convenient. Somewhere familiar.

You buy me an iced coffee we playfully push the two dollars back and forth across the table as I insist to pay you back and you refuse. As a gentleman. As a friend. The spell is broken when you ask about a scar and I realize I could never tell you. Well, I could. But I don't want to. That someone like you would never understand. And you let the subject drop so easily. You let it all go so easily. Instead you check the bus schedule and walk me to my stop. You get on your bike and ride down the street and you don't look back.

Another time you meet me at the mall. My father asks to meet you so he does. You are the first boy I know that he ever meets. But of course, this means nothing to you. And so I try to let this mean nothing to me too. I link our arms together and it's easier to touch you. Without anticipation. You leave me after we eat cinnamon rolls and do not look back. And I always find myself looking after you. A part of me brought back to the piece of myself left in that movie theatre parking lot in the afternoon sun. But I don't ever really love you again after that.

And I am better for it.

We are better for it.

I am glad I still have you.

For I don't know what would have become of us if not for your careless gaze and fickle heart.

I do not know what would have become of me.

And I am grateful now, for the falling out of love.

- #1: reflections on falling out of unrequited love with him

The last time I saw love was on my doorstep on a Sunday afternoon in winter. She looked pale and weak. Clutching a threadbare beige coat, arms hugged around her waist, already wilting daisies in hand. I could see a red stain blossoming behind the coarse material. I peak out the curtains, but leave the door closed. She catches a glimpse of me in the window and something like hope flickers in her iris. 

I let the curtain fall, my heart in my throat, then in my palms. It’s beating irregular. Not quite steady but not quite moving to the symphony in used to when love arrived. Love lays a palm against the front door. She calls my name. Barely audible over the wind but how could I mistake her voice. Seeping through the entryway and into my skin. 

My heart is still in my hands. I can hear love’s laboured breathing, just an arm’s length away. All I would have to do is turn the handle, a hopeful voice whispers. But I know this is a lie. Love is bleeding out on my door step. She is dying. I would have to do so much more to save her. Again. And I know that is why she is here. Because she cannot save herself. The greying supermarket flowers in her fingers are not just an offer, but a plea. 

I want to say “Love, no,” or “Love, I can’t,” or “Love, I’m sorry,”. I want to open the door and take her inside and treat her wounds and ask her to hold me as she heals. But I can’t. I can’t. Not this time. So I say nothing. I rest my back again the door and exhale. Or try to. All that comes out is a mangled sob and I clasp a damp palm across my mouth. She calls again, softer this time, nostaliga leaking into her voice. The muscle in my palms jumps and my eyes prick, hot tears flooding my vision. I press my back against the door, needing something solid. 

I have never held out this long. Always given in at the last minute, not ready to let her go. To let her die. Last time she had stopped breathing in the car and I waited a full minute before I jerked the car to a stop on the side of the highway and resuscitated her in the back seat. Begging her to come back. That I was sorry. That I could not live without her. She woke with a gasp and the promise of forever on her lips, as she always does. She has not been the same since then. She hasn't been the same for months, but especially since then. 

A bang rattles the door frame and I bite down on the soft spot between my thumb and forefinger, my back sliding down the door frame. It's quiet now, as I sit on the floor in the entereway. I squeeze my eyes shut and let the tears come silently, cradling my heart against my chest. I hold my breathe for a moment when I think I hear something on the otherside of the door, but it is just loves wheezing breath. I begin counting the seconds between her each inhale and exhale, as they gradually grow father and father apart. My heart is warm throught the fabric of shirt and my head is heavy. Soon love’s breathing stalls and does not pick up again. 

I count to ten and grit my teeth against the urge to toss my heart aside and pry open the door and breathe life into her. To yank her jacket open and shove my longing into her wound until the bleeding stops. To press assurances into the chest over and over until the spark returns to her eyes and she tells me everything is going to be okay. I’ve counted to twenty now and my back aches from this position on the ground but I dare not move. Not shatter this already delicate moment. Then I’ve counted to thirty, then sixty, then one hundred and twenty and then I loose track of the moments as my eyelids droop and rest tugs me under. I fall into a dreamless sleep with salt stained cheeks and my heart beating steady in my hands. 

When I wake, it is dark. As I peel my eyes open I realize it is the street lights that are casting dancing patterns across the tiled floor through the blinds. The only other source of light is a glow emitting from the kitchen where I must have left the switch on. My throat is dry and my legs ache as I stretch them out. It takes a second for me to recall where I am and why. A sweet flicker of a moment before I realize the weight of my heart in my hands is like lead. But it is whole. I breathe deep, feeling the ether stretch my lungs, and let my eyes close for an instant. Atleast it is whole, I remind myself. 

I shift my shoulders and adjust my poorly positioned neck that I know will hurt for days as I stand. I set my heart down by the door and glance out the curtains hesitantly. Even in the dark I can tell no one is there and I don’t know what I expected or what I feel. Disappointment and relief, panic and guilt, thread themselves between each other in knots in my stomach. I breathe deep again, hand finding the cool doorknob, gripping this understanding of the decision I have made. 

The door creaks and the cold of the night washes over me all at once, my breath fogging in front of me. I let my gaze wander across the landscape of the lawn and small porch. There is nothing, no matter how hard I squint into the black, there is nothing. I swallow and glance down where the welcome mat lays at the foot of the front door. Something lays there and I lean down to see what it is. My fingers brush over brittle stems. The flowers are long withered, a few frosted fallen petals remain, but most must have been blow to the wind. I set the corpses of the plants back down and retreat behind the door again, the cold air still clinging to my bones. 

I click the lock shut and rest my forehead against the white entryway. Everything aches and when I swallow it hurts but somehow I feel indescribably lighter. This time the weight on my chest is dense but not unbearable. Like in the aftermath of a disaster, when you’re standing in the midst of the wreckage, everything is awful and terrifying and you might want to fall to your knees and scream but at least the ground has stopped shifting. At least you know what you’re working with. You know the damage has been done and there will be no more anguish of breaking. Just the pain that comes with healing. And of course, it will hurt, but there is promise that it will eventually hurt less. And less. And maybe one day it won’t hurt at all anymore. Maybe. 

I lift my head and turn on the lightswitch. Picking my heart up off the floor, I make my way to the bathroom, where I promise myself warmth awaits me. In the mirror I marvel at my rid rimmed eyes and chapped lips. My wild hair and bear shoulder where my shirt has slipped. I press my fingers against the glass and sigh. I swallow my heart and feel the wound settle inside me taking a moment to readjust to the weight. As I peel my clothes from body, I catch a glimpse of something move in the mirror and my heart skips a beat. But by the time my eyes focus, there is nothing there. My gaze flits around the room but there is nothing. I grip the counter and steady myself repeating this to myself. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. She is dead. There is nothing left of her. Except memory, a disloyal part of me whispers. Except ghost. Except ghost, I agree relecutently. 

I undress and avoid letting my gaze snag in the mirror again. The water is turned on and before long steam fogs the glass anyways. Under the stream the cold melts from my muscles and some stiffness surrenders to the current. Here I sit with the knowledge that she is dead. That I let her die. I may not have been the one that dealt the killing blow but I let her bleed out on my doorstep. And she is gone. She may come back to haunt me occasionally, but I trust these instances will fade eventually with her memory. By trust I mean I hope. But I can not dwell on this. Cannot let the thought of her suffocate me. She is dead and I am not. I am alive. I let her die so I could live. And I will. I will. 

- Love will haunt you long after she is dead

Everyone says they would rather skip the small talk

Get to the deep stuff

The important things

As though the little things are not the entrance to the heart

The cracks and crevices not the softer way

To make home in ones affection

Over breaking open the ornate doors

Of their chambers

Leaving them bleeding out

So tell me

How you take your eggs

And that ponytails make your scalp itch

Tell me how long it takes you to drive to work

And where you like to sit on the train

Talk to me about weather

And about how you keep forgetting to take out the trash

So that one day when I show up with a cup of tea just the way you like it

And we talk the long path home

Just past the mural you love on 22nd street

You will know

Just how important

The little things are

To me

When they belong to you

~ i met her in September

Oh to be loved the way she loves the dawn.

To be seen the way she sees the sunrise

To hold her the way she lets the light hold her.

-

You cannot hold the light

But that does not mean you cannot let it hold you

Surrder, darling

The caress of the sun is yours

Asking nothing in return

But that you rest in the warmth of its embrace

And if you wish

To reciprocate,

To give a little too,

Then open your heart,

And let the light in

- for what is more selfless than the dawn?

I am three

I ask my mother to have ice cream for dinner

And she says no

And I promise myself that

When I grow up

I will have ice cream for dinner

I am ten

The people at my new school make fun of my hair

My arms

My legs

My teeth

I tell my mother I want to take my skin off

I want to pluck my bones out

She tells me I could try waxing

I could get braces

She tells me it will hurt

And I promise myself that

When I grow up

I will be beautiful

I will be able to handle the pain of changing my body

I am fifteen

The doctor says I need to be admitted to the hospital

I say no

My parents say I do not get a choice

I'm a minor

And I promise myself that

When I grow up

My "no" will matter

I will get to choose when and how I heal

I will get to choose if I don’t

I am 17 and there is ice cream in the freezer

And I eat it for dinner

But the satisfaction isint as sweet as I thought it would be at three

I miss my mother and decide to have a side of vegetables too

I am 17 and I am beautiful because I say so

I am 17 and decide to heal because I deserve to

I am 17

I am not grown up

I am still growing

I think I will be for a while

When I was young, love was always big, but never so big someone out there couldn't fit it in a poem. I am less young now.

Once, I read about how grief is too big to write. That you have to paint it in negative space. You have to tell it in molecules. You cannot write the galaxy, you have to write the smallest star. You cannot write the torn fabric, you have to write the fraying thread. You have to write the empty hangers, you have to write all the extra hot water the shower now has, you have to write the tongue cutting itself on past tense verbs. You write the empty shoes, you write the unbaked banana bread, the red grapes only she ate growing mold in the fridge, you write the bed into an ocean unbearably vast.

I am less young now, and I realize you must write love like grief. And is this not the truest metaphor I have ever touched. For in this way, all the greatest loves do not have poems. For how does one write the peace into pieces small enough to be held by the craters in every o and b and p. I am less young now, and in this way I do not want a love worthy of poems. I would like one that could never be penned. That could never fit in the span of a few stanzas. I want us forever unwritten.

When is the last time I brushed my teeth?

Looked at my father and did not think him weak

When is the last time I ate cereal for breakfast

Or went outside

Or held someone’s hand

When is the last time I cried

Really wept

Or knew why I was getting out of bed

When is the last time I saw you

When is the last time I loved

Looked at someone at did not simply think them beautiful

But wondered what it would be like for that beauty to choose me

When is the last time someone looked at me and I blushed

Not because I felt ashamed but because

Their gaze tasted like possibility

Like a honeymoon in library

When is the last time I felt

Excited

When is the last time I wanted

And was hurt by disappointment

When is the last time my heartbreak fissured the earth

Instead of simply burying me deeper in endless night

When is the last time I let someone take from me until I was empty

And sat with that hollow until I was rebirthed

When is the last time I was a child

When is the last time I was alone and felt lonely

When is the last time I wrote a poem?

It has been so long

So

Long

~ I have since been resuscitated

How does a poet ever write about

The things that matter

I want to write about

My mother’s notebook

And my sister the dying star

I want to write about the grieving blackhole

And the beauty of supernova unbecoming

I want to write about

The library that swallowed the sun

And burned

And burned

And burned

I want to write about how every book

Has smelt slightly of smoke to me since then

I want to write about forgiveness

I want to write about my unravelling

The things I will never get back

I want to write about the teardrops of time

Filtering through my lashes

I want to write about the end

I want to write about the end

The end

But it is all so

Hopeless

So infinite

I try to write of it

And I sit with the galaxy in the pit of me

And I ache

The words die on my fingertips

The metaphors swell until my throat is

A rose stem

And I lay on the living room floor

Remembering how to breathe

Promise myself

I do not have to write the poem

Promise myself

I never have to write again

And the galaxy consumes itself

And there are no poems

There are no poems

About the things

That matter

~ don't call me a poet

My family is a compilation of unhealed truths and disintegrating hearts

Infection is setting in but we are all too proud to ask for help

We do not know how to say:

I cannot fix this one,

this time

it is not simply my refusal to

This time

I could not stitch this back together

Even if I tried

But we are more than willing to gripe about the pain

To say that we are dying without the weight of the fact that the end is coming for us

Will rotting away in the back of the fridge with the oranges I told my mother not to buy

She says it is her money

Tells me to stop worrying about the price of things

When all she has ever taught me is how much life costs at someone else's expense

.

My father says he's sorry

It is the one thing my mother

Never did

He says he's sorry and that he is trying

To change

He says he is getting better

I say

Okay

I try to

Believe him

I try to

Forgive

But I have never been taught how

Never been taught the phonetic difference between

Mercy and forgetting so they become

Synonyms

And remembering a sin

Only committed in the shower

When the water is louder than the sacrilege

And how can I hold him

When I am still mourning the loss of the

Parts of me he shattered

Because he was angry

But even I know

How much easier it is

To hate

Than to

Grieve

.

I remind myself

I have broken things too

I remind myself

I am only

What I have let myself become

I remind myself

I have no one

To blame

But myself

So I blame her

Bathe in doubt

And swallow the bathwater

~ my mother will never be sorry

I want to shout at every passing stranger

Every person who thinks they know me now

Do you know

That I was soft once?

That I had long hair and

A small body

And a heart that could have loved you

Do you know that

I could have loved you

Once

I wait for someone to tell me

That I’ve changed

But they do not

And I mourn for the loss of me alone

She will never get to fall in love

When I do, it will not be the same

When it ends it will be an Antarctic winter

Perpetual darkness

Night amongst night

It will be a small dead star long dead

The ones that fade forgotten

In the oblivion of space

She would have done so much better

Her heartbreak would have been spectacular

Would have been Tsunami and supernova

It would have been beautiful destruction and art

It would have been art

It would have birthed revolutions even in her misery

It would have meant something

And even in the absence

Of condolences

I know she did exist

I only ever wrote for you after our end

Which meant every poem tasted too much like an overripe obituary on the tongue

But when has guilt ever stopped me from doing something I shouldn't

What has poetry ever done but turn me selfish

Let me repaint everything in shades that complement the tale of my own tragedy

For what is the heartbreak of an artist

If not another poem the world could have done without

- the phases of the moon speak with the stages of grief -

1.

The Loss: {silence}

The New Moon: {silence}

The Loss: Is this the end?

The New Moon: I suppose it depends on where you start. For some, this is the beginning. For others, this is the end.

The Loss: {silence}

The New Moon: {silence}

The Loss: It is so dark.

The New Moon: I know.

The Loss: {silence}

The New Moon: The ache will come in waves. The tides are always highest when the loss is new or full.

The New Moon: {silence}

The Loss: {silence}

2.

Shock & Denial: This is not the end.

Waxing Crescent: No, I suppose this is just the beginning.

Shock & Denial: The darkness cannot last.

Waxing Crescent: The darkness is eternal. It is the light that must fade eventually.

Shock & Denial: This is not the end.

Waxing Crescent: No, I suppose a cycle cannot end, but nor can it begin. For some things are forever.

3.

Pain & Guilt: It hurts

First Quarter: It will not last.

Pain & Guilt: Perhaps it should. Perhaps this is what I deserve.

First Quarter: Why?

Pain & Guilt: I could have...

First Quarter: You could not have. There are some things you cannot change. There are some things that are meant to happen. They cannot be stopped. I would know.

Pain & Guilt: It hurts.

First Quarter: For now. For this is just a phase

4.

Anger & Bargaining: If I promise to change, do you think life will return?

Waxing Gibbous: Do you think you can change?

Anger & Bargaining: Perhaps if life came back.

Waxing Gibbous: You can not barter with life or with the light. You will change when you are meant to. When you are ready. And they will come and go when they are meant to. When they are ready.

Anger & Bargaining: And who are they to get to say? Who are you?

Waxing Gibbous: I am but a phase. I am but the part of the moon the light is meant to hold tonight.

Anger & Bargaining: I would have given my light for theirs.

Waxing Gibbous: Light is light. It belongs to no one. It is not yours. It was not theirs. And who are you to command the light?

Anger & Bargaining: {silence}

Waxing Gibbous: {silence}

Anger & Bargaining: I am but a phase. I am temporary. The light will leave me too.

Waxing Gibbous:  But it has not yet.

5.

Depression: Is this the end?

Full Moon: I suppose it depends on where you start. For some, this is the beginning. For others, this is the end.

Depression: I think I would like for this to be the end.

Full Moon: But look how far you’ve come.

Depression: I think I would rather return to before the beginning.

Full Moon: But look, you are already almost there.

Depression: I don’t know if I will make it. I feel so empty.

Full Moon: But look at how full you are of sorrow.

Depression: {silence}

Full Moon: The ache will come in waves. The tides are always highest when the loss is new or full.

6.

The Upward Turn: I feel lighter. I do not understand why. For there is more darkness here than there was before.

Waning Gibbous: The darkness does not always have to be heavy. Sometimes the darkness is a mercy. Sometimes it is a chance to start again.

The Upward Turn: I don’t know if I am ready to start again without them. Not yet.

Waning Gibbous: Not yet. Not before you are ready. You must trust the light will turn when it is time

The Upward Turn: It still hurts.

Waning Gibbous: It will. for this love is not a phase, but this sorrow is.

7.

Reconstruction & Working Through: This is not the end.

Third Quarter: No, this is not.

Reconstruction & Working Through: There is more to life than the way it ends.

Third Quarter: Yes, there is.

Reconstruction & Working Through: There are ways to remember others without forgetting yourself. Life lies beyond this. I feel it.

Third Quarter: You must strive to find revival in the darkness. You must trust the light will come for you even when you cannot see it.

Reconstruction & Working Through: Even in the aftermath of loss. I will strive to rebuild a life in which their memory will last. A life worthy of the light to return to.

Third Quarter: It is not about being worthy. It never was. It is about spending your time well while you have it. It is about not wasting away worrying about the next phase but just existing in this one. And trusting the light will hold you and have you and leave you exactly when it is meant to. Do you trust?

Reconstruction & Working Through: I am trying to.

Third Quarter: Then that is enough.

8.

Acceptance & Hope: Is this the end?

Waning Crescent: People tell me that I am the end, and yet in all my years I have not felt like the end. I have not yet met it but I do not think it looks like this.

Acceptance & Hope: No, I do not think it looks like this either. But what comes after this?

Waning Crescent: I have heard rebirth comes after this. That it lays in the darkness. In the unknown.

Acceptance & Hope: And I will be rebirthed into a new life in which they are gone. Do you not fear the day when the light does not return for you?

Waning Crescent: Not anymore. For today is not that day. Perhaps, tomorrow, when the light leaves, she will not return. But today, she is not done with me yet.

Acceptance & Hope: No, not yet.

Waning Crescent: Not yet.

tell me you love me

i don’t give a fuck how much you mean it

say the words , because

i don’t hear them often . & as a writer

words are the only language

i understand

you missed the nine o’clock train

You wear

silence’s

jacket

and the acne

that creeps down

the shadows

of your neck

scribbles down

your screams

on the back

of a crumpled napkin

that you always keep

in your back left

pocket.

You are soaked in

faltering voices

yet you are

the flower

growing

in the washed-out

asylum of humanity

and I am in

desperate need

of your fragrance.

I thought

that I had caught

a glimpse of you

arms crossed

wondering down

the hallway

of unsaid nostalgia

perhaps chewing some skin

off your lower lip

perhaps a tear

or two

polishing the floor

under your feet.

But you always come

twenty minutes late

to the suburbs

of my emotions

so you saw me

and kept walking.

A new chapter

but

the ink

from

the last one

always

bleeds

through.  

© Margaux Emmanuel