my soul is poetry.

the inner linings are the stanzas
strong and protecting against the white barrier of a page
or the inevitability of time

it flows like free verse
or runs like rhymes
never stopping, never starting, endless against the hourglass
which is my beating heart

the hollows of my chest are the words I never say out loud
but I spill out on paper like the confessions of a sinner
it is there they are finally allowed eternal rest
and are free from damnation

I am the twists and turns of a sonnet
a side stepped soliloquy
a dead end didactic

I am this
the words i write
the things i feel
the being i am

and i am poetry

I watch the water
beam from the sun
and that is what you call
making love
The Earth is the greatest poet I know.
I pluck at her expression
every so often
merely attempting
to translate her lyrics
into something,
just something
we can all feel and understand

This is heartbreak.

I thought I was over you. You treated me as a remedy, a medicine that did not quite sate your hunger. You went to her. And I thought I was over you.

This is.

this is not what I wanted. I never asked for the nights of sleeplessness, the depressive episodes, the lack of eating. I never asked for this half-assed suicidal ideation. Who would have known that I would be lazy in the face of death too. Coward.

this.

this is what my dad talked to me about. This is what he meant when he said the tears may never stop, the heart may never start pumping again. And I never believed it would happen to me.

this.

this is heartbreak.

this is what heartbreak looks like.

you looking at him

him looking at you

me, absent.

I know what love looks like.

this is what heartbreak sounds like.

your promises you would never do this to me

my heart breaking more when you did

this is what heartbreak is.

the smiles you two share when you know he is not free

still caged, still wings flapping,

and me

wings broken.

left behind

to fend for myself

weak and tattered on the floor

This is what heartbreak looks like.

It is the soliloquies you wrote to him at midnight while crying

It is the formality a smile and the absence of warmth

It is the nausea and the ***** because this mornings breakfast just didn't have the heart to stay with you

He didn't either

This is what heartbreak sounds like.

Silence
Breaking
Static

This is what heartbreak feels like.

The burn of your concerned friends eyes into your back

The burn of the shame tinging your cheeks red

This is what heartbreak is.

You
Me
But not us

Never us

i do not know what i write poetry for
there is something missing in the hollow of my chest
but i can not say why
i don't know how long it's been missing
or if i've always been like this
but i am aware
conscious
awake
and hurting.

this body is no longer mine

my knees are empty

my chest hollow

my eyes vacant

i am not me