photo: Violet Visions
A Heart breaks in many ways
Some break rapidly
An all at once ocean parting, rushing to the land,
destroying all in its path before
quietly receding back to sea
Some break slowly
Unseen
barely felt
an earthquake deep
in the rumbling underground
with aftershocks that whisper
and quickly pass disregarded
With no apparent damage to the structure of the house,
all seems well. Life moves on. Seasons change.
The memory of the event fades like a dream.
Until suddenly years later the shelves fall rambunctiously off the walls,
quietly cracking under the weight of
barely holding it together.
The instantaneous crashing of vases on tiles surprises
even though we know it’s been ages since tectonic plates slid into position.
Echos of despondency rupturing at a speed most human.
Delayed reaction is common,
especially when a heart has been taught they were supposed to be
strong enough to withstand the shaking changing
groundlessness of impermanence
Yet the shelves still fall.
Books fly off the walls.
Every scripture once elevated
Now lays a broken mess of words on the floor
And there i find my hands clutching
a note i wrote to myself
Covertly slipping out
from one of the pages
It reads:
‘there’s nothing wrong
with the way you love,
the pace with which
your grief breaks ground,
the time it takes to feel the loss
Nor the style by which
You recover form
from all the beautiful
shattering pieces’