Someone once said, “Get your heart real good broken and you’ll be a poet for the rest of your life”. I don’t actually know if someone ever said this but I hope someone did ‘cause I would like to hear it. I would like to know that this pain will last for good reasons and that my words will come back through it, ‘cause I’ve been dry on words like a prayer in the desert, no life or sign of spark. I’ve lived so nicely, so slowly, making my way towards something I never really knew what, but it was so nice, to slow down. To not flee, just stay. A quiet living. A quiet street. I have lived so nicely.
I expected a catastrophic chaos in all kinds of awful, but my heart is strangely quiet.
There is a quiet peace even in the loudness of a heartbreaking. There is a strange sense of acceptance, like nodding my head, to myself, saying, it’s alright, it’s alright, you’re doing fine. Maybe I’m just older. Been here before, know my way out. Maybe it’s quietly dying, sometimes I feel like I am, either way, how does ‘alive’ feel? But I know I can’t go back, only forward, no use in fighting, so onwards I go, a little every day, and I do the best I can.
It comes in waves, mostly at night. Dreams and memories resurface and I wake up cold and tired, lonely in a vast sea of sadness. how can the lack of someone feel so large? how can the lack of someone feel so heavy? it’s December and the early evenings are so dark.
My brain jumps in and out, hopeful to devastated. I’m crying but I’m so so happy. I’m sorry, but I’m so grateful. For the lessons. For the growth.
I should have focused on being a writer. I used to write quite well, I think? I had a lot to say, a lot to think about. I think a lot of people could relate. I got letters and gifts back then, people saying “thank you”. I should have kept to my words, kept writing to people and for people and maybe I could have been someone for someone. You know, one of those you turn to when you’re in pain.
But i’m back again, feeling things, staying up with the moon listening to the same old songs, like back then, when i wrote, all the time, saying things, reaching out. Maybe I can be someone now, for someone. Maybe I can write myself out of this one too, like I’ve done so many times. Write my way out of it.
I will be a writer now. I will say it all.
// from my book He loved me some days. I’m sure he did 🥀
In the mood for more poetry?