I sweep up the pieces.
Methodically
and with the same rhythm
of the feet that walked through me.

I gather them and I spread them out.

I touch
and feel
and remember
each piece
and who resided there.

I think about all of the places
they took them
and all that they must have seen.

And after studying and remembering
and maybe imagining
some of the history
since I last pulled out my needle and thread,

I write.
I stitch together things that were,
I thread through myself
the things that couldn’t be,
and I plunge
into everything
that will never exist.

I come out of it
shocked
and sober.

I draw my heart
into a Venn diagram of sorts
and try to keep experiences separate.

The lines fade after time.

Sometimes I awake
in the middle of the night
and must sort through everything again
because it has all slid to one side.
I walk carefully,
attempting to keep balance;
the road is not smooth.

I cry.
A lot.
I flush out the sadness
and fill myself
with emptiness instead.

But then I feel hollow
as if a breeze could pick me up
and I might blow away,
and I allow the thoughts of what was
to weigh my heart down
and anchor me;
this heaviness leads to
me ringing it out again.

Heartbreak is a vicious cycle
that tears me apart
but teaches me how put myself back together.

I also drink a lot of chai tea.
I warm myself from the inside out.
And do a lot of ballet.
Discipline my muscles.

The most excruciating part about heartbreak,
is that it is completely irrevocable.
I do not,
cannot,
remember
what it was like
to not feel this way.

How did I sit still
without my heart quivering
and making a show of it
with my trembling hands?
How did I smile
without feeling untrue
to the inner most workings of me?
Will there always be these cracks?