Tuesday, May 17, 2016

This too shall pass

Your heart can be broken once
You realize when you have to cut people off
mid-conversations
to go and find a place to hide
so you can cry in peace,
and seem to have forgotten how to
go back to sleep
when you wake up at 3am
with a taste of falling leaves
and earthworms in your mouth.

And didn't his mama teach him
Not to play rough in the house?
All that running around
Now off he went to play
somewhere else
and you're left with pieces
shattered, that once were whole.

Your heart can be broken twice
Yes, people wrote about this, you know.
What you didn't know was how flowers
would shrivel and turn to ash
when you'd walk past them,
and the pain would be a stagnant pool
waiting for you to fall back in
at the bottom of every staircase
you'd walk down.

Yet he was such a pretty little thing
You just tiptoed around
To be handled with care and
only wearing kid gloves
Never thinking not him but
you'd be the one
in need of protecting.

Your heart can be broken thrice
The fingers tightening around your lungs
made it clear for you, no doubt,
while you hyperventilated
trying to exhale the bitter smoke
of love now lost.
Cough and cough and out it goes
Leaving you brittle, weak,
this pathetic mess of a thing,
that you are too ashamed to talk about.

Your heart can be broken many times
Even when you're too old for this crap
that just makes you more brittle 
Break and mend, that's how these things work.
You always eventually heal,
will be skipping through life once again.
Whatever will remain are
maybe a handful of poems
that you'll think are a bit too dramatic
when you find yourself smiling
under the freshly minted sun.

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