Heartbreak Haiku.

Calluses can help

on fingers, but not on hearts.

Leather hovers here.

Fainting –

Did you know I’ve never fainted, I muttered.

 

But, you asked, What about the time

you said his words collided with your skull

and you felt yourself drop to the floor, unable

to get back up?

 

Ah yes, I said, that was

wishful thinking. 

 

To obliterate a moment with sheer will,

to dive into denial by flipping a switch, turning off

the world. No, I’ve been entirely too conscious

this entire time. Wide awake, absorbing it all –

I can barely blink.

 

So, when his words slapped my skull, I cursed

my strong heart, blood pressure, good constitution.

It would have been nice to hit the rest button, if only

for a moment. To lend appropriate gravity

to the occasion.

Because I still eat, brush my teeth, shower, walk around.

 

Looking at me is not like looking at the results

of plate tectonics – no one could tell upon inspection

that I am

a rift,

an earthquake,

a tsunami,

a mountain range

thrust up from the molten depths

of this life. No one can tell what power made me –

I look ordinary

as anything. I can’t even faint.

Alternative

My mother lives

in Chartrons, just outside

the center of Bordeaux. I moved

with my father to America when

I was five and have just recently

moved back

after graduating

to find work.

 

I tried to keep up

with my French and visited

every few years, but am far from

fluent anymore.

 

I am living here for an indefinite period of time.

Progress.

Well, today,

I guess I mowed the lawn.

I guess I read Mary Oliver.

I guess I meditated for 5 minutes

(excepting when the squirrels in the yard started fighting and I got distracted).

I guess I haven’t cried that much.

I guess I did some sit-ups.

I guess I only watched 3 movies.

I guess, I guess, I guess.

The Door Falls Shut

I felt the silence growing

between us. Like he was stopping up

all his dopamine and oxytocin and

electrons

with corks

so none could get all over me – over us.

 

What’s odd is that the second he said we

weren’t right for each other, he made it

true. Up until then, it had been up in the air

siding on the

already-planning-our-first-dance-at-the-wedding.

 

I am so much, but mostly, right now, I am tired.

I am so tired of dragging him along, trying to lead

by example with my kisses and affectionate

tone. He didn’t want to give me any

back.

 

So let the door fall shut, heavy,

clinking with finality.

 

They say a window opens

but I’ll be damned if I don’t bust out through

one of the walls.

Kick through, because for so long I’ve just been

*this*

shy of right for another person and I’ve always been just

*this*

close to losing

my mind over it. I said once I didn’t pity

lovers who fell apart and I still don’t – no self-pity here. More like

self-get-your-shit-together-or-else.

another letter i didn’t send

I’m sorry, old friend.

I’m sorry that I couldn’t let my imagination

leave you damn well alone,

sorry that I couldn’t just take you

for who you were

and what you had to offer me. I wanted

more and I took more, and what could you do but

run away? Some days, now,

I come to understand that we were never

meant to be together.

 

Oh, but other days,

other days I remember

 

the night that I said I didn’t want

to go back inside,

the evening was so beautiful,

and you told me

we didn’t have to.

 

You made us gin and tonics

and we wandered over to a big tree

to watch the sun

go down.

 

We leaned on it together, laughed

and pretended to ignore the way our shoulders

rubbed together.

 

I remember that day, and something inside of me

still cannot understand how you aren’t here with me, now.

 

Half of me saw the way you leaned back, away from me.

The other half saw the look in your eye, that was uninhibited and true.

 

You loved me.

I know you did.

 

I tell myself you didn’t but you must have, because

I can’t be living the way I am now

off the steam of a completely

unrequited love,

can I?

 

Either way, I’m sorry, old friend.

You were the best one I’d had in ages,

and while you ripped that away from me one

Saturday morning, I can’t lay the blame

at your feet.

 

I don’t know where they are, love.

On Repeat.

I went to write the song

of our love.

Only to find it had already been written.

 

Years ago.

 

The song plumbed the depths of our souls, whispered

with violin, with cello, the beauty lying there.

Lyrics evoking Scottish highlands, cherry blossoms.

They were lakeside in New Hampshire, the minor key mirrors

the late night conversations, the Tolstoy novel.

 

How then, dear, can I love you uniquely?

Someone has already captured it so well. How can my

heart

be so arrogant as to mourn that love?

It has been written, played, recorded, and sold. We are not

a secret sound, an undiscovered chord.

Surgery

She saw you on the street.

I always thought it would be me.

 

She saw you and spoke to you and heard

your voice.

Calling me after to tell about it, her description

was lacking. She said,

it was weird and that you were uncomfortable.

 

Oh, but I wanted to hear about the tendrils of hair that fall

in front of your ears. I wanted to know what shade of blue

your eyes flicked to when they recognized her. I hungered to know

the length of your stubble that moment.

Are you still so tall? Do you button your flannels all the way up?

Do the cuticles of your nails still indicate neglect born from a love

of anything but yourself?

 

Hearing secondhand that you still exist out there –

receiving confirmation that I did not invent you in 2010 as a lovely

daydream.

 

It was a hip replacement surgery – it was triple bypass. It was lobotomy.

Ripping sutures that should have been left, slicing with precision to expose

what had been damaged. Probing into what had begun to

heal.

I sit, swollen with those memories and the scent of pollen

struggling to breathe under the weight of so much

time.

 

 

 

 

Silence

I remember the day that you told me

it was over. We stood in the kitchen – I was making soup.

 

 

You didn’t lean down, kept you head tall

just your eyes shifted to mine and you said

it was over.

 

 

I expected, then, a swell of music. An orchestra

of mourning cellos. Some sort of syncopated sound to

puncture my ears same as my heart.

 

 

I expected the movies – that life would add drama

to my pain, make it feel heroic.

The silence hit me harder than a mournful violin.

The silence and the way I noticed the floor was dirty.

You turned and walked away, leaving me collapsed

up against the cupboard.

 

 

It’s all been silence since.

Broken Up

I’m all rubble.

 

I am fragments left for a distracted boy to kick down the street

while he pops his bubble gum

on the way to the baseball game.

 

The same dirt that grinds into his knee

as he slides across home, brushing me off.

 

I am dust picked up by the air,

tossed through screen doors, soon

brushed out again

by exasperated mothers.

 

I’m the grime the working man

scrubs off his boots on Sundays –

 

sitting on his porch watching his children play in the dirt

I was piled into by a bulldozer

to clear space.