funny how something
i thought would feel liberating
has me shackled tighter
than ever

i'd been seething
with anger and disappointment
sorrow, exhaustion
but with the burner extinguished
now im emptier than before

do you ever drip tears
of lead
of mercury?
heavy metals that
carve tracks in your face
as you
carve someone out of your life

existing is exhausting

i spent so many seconds
bled into minutes
into hours
into days
thinking of you

what hurts most
is that i know you haven’t done the same.
somewhere out there
you sleep
untroubled

the sun is coming up
and my blistering eyes can barely
stand to see it.
i’ve gone blind
looking for what we used to be

even when i sleep
when i dream
of you still caring
i just want to wake up.
i want the dreams to end.
it hurts to face
what i can’t have

in this rubble
i see pieces of us
and i pick them up even though
i don’t know what i’ll do with them.
the glue that held them together
is so very gone

don’t quite understand
can’t quite understand
anything

it’s like when you take a staged picture
everyone is smiling
click
flash
the picture is taken.
within a moment
everyone’s smile drops
where did we go wrong?

i want so badly
so so badly
for us to be worth it.
all signs point to no
and yet i persist
a fish swimming against the current
too weak to overcome the flow
too weak to let go and turn around

tonight
i can only hope
our time together meant something
to you.
that i’m not alone in thinking
what we had was special.
that i am not alone

i search for memories buried under
miles of debris and find
that i remember i was happy once.

i scour my memories so hard until i can
no longer tell if my hands are bleeding
blood or rust.
this is where i realize that i do not
remember what happiness feels like.

is it more depressing to have never
been happy,
or to know you were happy once
without knowing
what it meant
      what it was
             what it felt like
                   that you'd lose it . . .

disappointment
disillusioned
hurt me harder
make me feel

crush my breath
these shards of glass
disenchantment
disappear

It only hurts when I think about it,
but it hurts not to think about it.
Although there are multitudes of stars
brilliant against the night, all of that fades
when the moon is missing—
when the moon has run away
to orbit another planet—
when I said that I loved you and only you
and so the moon grew dim for me and only me.

And now if I crunch an apple between my teeth,
I pretend it is the heart you proved I had.
And if I hear euphony—trickles of water in dreams—
and if I see a crimson-throated bird crying into the fog,
I think of you and I think of me.
Then I think of me without you,
which means I think of nothing.
And finally I think of how these are only words
that you will never read.
Because there is no light to read them by,
as the moon's brilliance has danced away.

Everything I own, I carry with me:
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
It has done me good because of the color of the wheat
But love is not a victory march

Herta Müller
e.e. cummings
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Leonard Cohen