Tag: heartbreak

Finished.

Published on by ARiso1 Comment

I have to stop.
I think now is the time.

I thank you for all
of the inspiration.

I thank you for all
of the sweet moments (and hard ones too).

I thank me for all
of the care, even in the darkness.

I just, can’t. Anymore.
It’s all too much.

That’s a common thread,
if you don’t remember.

Everything is always
too much, and yet

sometimes not enough.

But this poem,
this set of poems —

I think it’s time to move on,
to move forward

from what ifs
and what was.

I need to heal
outside of these words

because these words,
as beautiful and heartbreaking

I think they are,
only perpetuate

my bad brain musings
and habits.

So, this is
goodbye.

This is
the end of something

I never intended to start.
This is —

this was —
the story

of us.

Thoughts.

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I felt happy the other day, truly happy.
The joy came from being apart from everything, everyone who knows of the ache in my chest.

It felt ingenuine to allow the happiness in, to feel together with people who barely know me past my last name, yet…

I drove away shaking, literally shaking with joy.
I was myself separate from all of my parts and the past and the baggage of everything.

It scared me. How could I feel joy with this heaviness settled into my bones?
Who am I if not *this* and that and the other?

Fleeting as it was, it left me with hope — hope that one day things will feel different.
One day, I will take a train away from all of *this* to see the sun rise fresh over a scar of blue tapestry.

Ponderings.

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Do you think about the dinosaurs?
What about the dodos?
Not the band, the bird.

Do you still have my book?
The one I let you borrow,
oh so long ago, when all of *this,*
did not exist between us?

What is *this,* you ask?
I think that’s up for you to decide.
For me, *this* is learning to grieve,
to keep living even when I’m tugged
towards the unknown.

*This* is finding paths for
distractions to become joys.

*This* is finding energy
and handing it to my heart,
gift-wrapped with a little tag
quoting Mary Oliver.

*This* might be nothing for you.
You might not even remember
all that was…
Hell, perhaps you lost my book.

One day I’ll reach out again,
using the book as both
excuse and knife
to cut the cords wrapped
around my wrists.

Break.

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I would let you break my heart, again.
A thousand times even,
if that meant I got to spend more days with you.

I’ve thought about it before,
you and I reuniting after all this time,
the ocean of agony and joy I would feel,
the fear I would foster,
the lack of trust I would eventually shed.

I often think back to what you said,
when we smelled of campfire and despair,
about “not wanting to cause hurt” —
or was it “too much hurt?” Perhaps you said,
“I don’t want to hurt you more.”

Whatever it was,
I doubt you or I ever imagined this.
If you saw my hurt now,
would you recognize it?

Would you recognize me?

I barely do.
It’s all color and sound,
distractions and light.

I keep the cracks hidden,
buried beneath layers of pencil
and fidgeting fingers.

Would I worry about being heartbroken,
again, because of you?

Of course.
But how beautiful,
to be broken by the same person twice.

Heartbreak. pt. 2

Published on by ARiso2 Comments

Every day, I decide to get up and move my body — to nourish her physically and intellectually. Yet, everyday, I think about what would happen if I didn’t.

What if I simply disappeared?

I joke about it, infrequently, until it hits — hard — in the stomach. Like a blow from a sledgehammer. Then, I joke to cope, to bring the ideas to fruition without action.

Heartbreak. That also hits hard, but not like a sledgehammer. It’s more like hearing someone call your name, but no one is there. It’s like rolling over in the night, reaching for another’s warmth, to only find the chill of a ghost. It’s running down a hill and not being able to stop — running so fast you think your legs will detach from your body and will continue on without you. It’s the feeling of falling out of a hot air balloon, in a dream, and jolting awake with the force of gravity pulling you down to Earth.

What if I simply disappeared?

The jokes, as hilarious as they may be, never sit well once the darkness comes. Their realness, their possibility, is so present when left alone with a no. 2 pencil and my thoughts.

I hate that you know this side of me. I hate that a part of me feels torn, like confetti, tossed in the ocean — I will never get all of my pieces back. I don’t tell people these things because I am afraid. I am afraid of losing something in me by letting people be privy to my inner demons. I made friends with them, the demons, long ago, and I fear that to lose them would be to anger them, and to anger them would be to let them take hold.

What if I simply disappeared?

This feeling of heartbreak is all too real, yet it is not what I expected. I expected more initial pain, like being stabbed in the leg. I wanted a gash that could be sutured. What I have is a small tear around my fingernail. It bleeds, it scabs, it throbs, it repeats.

Why did you have to be so beautiful in your giving and taking of self?

What if I simply disappeared?

Heartbreak.

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This must be what heartbreak feels like.

It’s not immediate, like the movies make it out to be;
it’s a slow process of coming to realize
the hopes and dreams you once had will never come true,
at least, not with the person you thought.

Movies depict young women wallowing,
eating pints of ice cream and crying all of the time.
But then it’s over.

It’s been one and a half months,
and though I have not eaten pints of ice cream,
I have cried. I have mourned the future as I mourn the past.

Slowly, I’m learning more and more ways
I am affected by this shift.
I didn’t know how much of me was reflected in us,
and how much of us was reflected in me.

I almost hate that you are doing fine.
It feels icky to say so, but it’s true.
I don’t want to carry the pain of the lack of us alone,
yet here I am, hunched over with the weight
of what could have been on my back.

Thursday, June 17 {part 2}

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I feel like a raft out at sea,
drifting with oars pulled in,
rocking to a rhythm unknown to me.

I will hit land eventually,
or choose to put my oars
out in search of it,
but for now,
I choose to float, feeling
the emptiness of the realness.

Realness, something
I didn’t know I could understand,
but my fingers
type out these words knowing
more than they ever did before.