She didn’t love me
the way I needed…
The way I wanted to be loved.
She couldn’t.
Didn’t have the ability.
She could if she changed.
But she won’t change.
That would take too much
work, vulnerability, and humility.
So she deludes life and
eschews love.
She doesn’t care.
There are a lot of other people
who live like her.
Likely someone reading this poem
right now.
I think it’s sad, but I guess
it’s really very human for people
to be afraid of change,
and afraid of love.
To love is to risk losing love
or risk not receiving love.
I’ll take that risk.
And I’m proud I will.
Tag: breakup
She sees I’m looking
for love.
And she’s scared.
Scared that someone could
look for love that bad,
that the world could make
someone so hopeful,
though so needy,
held on this cosmic ocean,
a sand grain
whirled before infinity and
annihilation.
She sees the annihilation
that my heart beats
every time she looks at me,
into my eyes,
and she sees all that’s been
lost and all that will be lost.
She’s scared, so she stops
looking and forgets in time.
But then time forgets her
and everything else.
This is a sad poem.
These are sad days these days.
Well, to be honest, these days
are a mix of incredibly fulfilling
and happy days, the happiest
I’ve experienced in my life, but then
sad days from dwelling in the pain
of a breakup, hearing the things
she said, over and over, in my head,
things she said to question my gender,
my legitimacy as a woman, and as a
gay woman — that I was not the real,
authentic deal for her.
So, sometimes I wonder, if I die in my
45th year, would she, wherever she’s at
when she receives the news,
would she breakdown?
Would she tear her living room apart,
smash furniture, throw knickknacks
against the wall until they shattered
into pieces of glass or porcelain?
Or, would she be with friends and drop
to her knees, crumble into their arms
in a sobbing, inconsolable state?
Or, would she just turn to her daughters
in a state of shock and say stoically,
“Nova’s dead”, then breakdown as
they watched her — scared and confused
and hurt themselves?
Or maybe, she simply wouldn’t care?
I found your strap-on harness.
I’m not sure what to do with it.
For a half second I got horny
looking at it,
thinking about how you looked handy
and manly wearing it across your
womanly curves.
You always wear your carpentry toolbelt
with such pride.
Then quickly I got sad and melancholy,
remembering how the last time
you used it on me
I started crying cuz I didn’t feel you were
f**king me with any interest…
then you started crying cuz you felt
critiqued.
I thought about dropping it off on your
front porch,
but I’m not traveling down your street anymore.
Plus, I concluded it would do neither
one of us any good to drop it off at your place.
I can’t keep it cuz not many women
will want to wear a strap-on
that another woman used on me.
I guess there’s maybe some out there
who would,
but I came to the conclusion to throw it
in the trash.
What I remember from her
is just something visceral.
Something in the body.
Raw. Ancient.
Long life. Sentient. Awake.
Star stuff.
I know we were a shitshow.
Bad words and hurtful things
said, done, and felt
to each other.
But somehow all I remember
is powerful, visceral, psychic,
physical, soulful
feelings.
Well, just a feeling.
One feeling, one unified feeling.
It feels very similar to
sunshine on your skin,
on an early October morning
in Texas,
in autumn of the northern
hemisphere
on Earth.
Do you know the feeling I’m talking
about?
When the sun touches you and
it feels your skin,
it fills your soul.
She knows I’m beautiful now.
Well, becoming more beautiful.
Though she doesn’t care anymore.
She let that kind of feeling go.
But she knows I’m having that
look these days
that others see and think
I’m a delight to look at and experience.
I might bring lust into a room.
There could be lust.
She could see my dark eyes
and my long eyelashes drawn across
the suspended air in stillness, calling
something sultry and sensual,
that dark hair majesty,
there with my cheekbones,
drawing my naughty eyes out
and shining on the naughty thoughts
of other women I see. Who go thinking.
They see me.
I’m seen.
I’m out.
It’s becoming and uncoming
in very much a way it never has before.
She knows I’m beautiful now.
But she doesn’t care anymore.
She can’t.
It would stop her world
and the kind of afternoons
she needs with herself.
I set to write the spells in
heartbreak.
The aborted child.
The lost capitalist culture.
The absent love of parents.
The lover whose heart I broke.
The lover who broke my heart.
The abusive father.
The abusive and withholding
partner, and the anger and anxiety
lived towards them.
The two cats who revolutionized
my soul, then lived, created
something joyous,
then died and went away.
The gender I am but in some way
will never wholly be in
other people’s eyes.
The hurtful things said.
The hurtful things heard that
are never surmounted once said.
The living of self that always
carries a crushed something.
The gentle smile I still manage
in soft quiet moments
with myself very still or
across to another’s eyes
who needs my gentle smile.
But I did not write these spells
in word —
I lived and live them.
And I guess they taught and
teach me to
love and love onward
somehow,
in a lifetime, in a life form, in a life
way remade, reformed, and
even revisited.
That is their spell.
That is the spells in heartbreak.
I love you Mother Earth.
I’m going through
my first lesbian breakup.
And I am standing on
you right now
looking up at a billion stars.
And I know I’m an Earthling.
Resolutely tender and mortal.
Vulnerable to the Universe’s
dispositions.
I will love you
always.
I can feel a thousand lifetimes
passing through our fingers.
She is a person who would
let a thousand lifetimes
pass through her fingers;
an epoch of love and lovers,
passed over.
She’s done it before,
many times.
I’ve seen it.
And I watch it now.
That’s why I was here again,
to see if things could go
differently.
But they won’t go differently.
She’ll be in this situation again;
it may not be on Earth,
it may be as a woman or as
a man,
it may be as a mom
or as an animal,
but she’ll do this over and
over.
That’s why I leaned in to
love her.
“Lightning strikes, maybe once? Maybe twice?”
– Fleetwood Mac (from the song Gypsy)
We both smoke
cigarettes
right now
because we’re heartsick.
So in love with the biggest
love we’ve both ever known,
but too tired to move forward.
So we puff, we puff, and puff
to give up on each other.
But I also go out
regularly each morning
and run an 8:45 minute mile…
because I’m strong-hearted,
rooted deep in my soul.
I wish… well… I wanted her
to value my strong heart and soulfulness.
But she didn’t,
so I continue on, running
and smoking and feeling and
mourning.
My heart continues with
the mad beauty and love
that I am
and that I have to offer.
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