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: heartbreak
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?
It’s a scary thing to admit,
maybe a scary thing to feel,
although physically, it feels
really good to get there.
Often these days, very late at night,
after I’ve done like eight
or nine lines of coke,
I’m able to finally lay there and
feel calm,
feel cool,
feel loved,
forget about you,
forget who you are,
forget that you exist,
forget that you no longer love me,
and then I’m able to
dumbly, mindlessly, numbly,
fall asleep and sleep good,
sleep in peace.
People don’t typically think of
cocaine working this way
and maybe that’s why this is
scary…
that this is what it’s evolved to.
This is what love is to me now.
I opened up someone
who should not be opened up.
She’s many thousands of
years,
maybe millions of years away
from being ready to be
opened up.
But I did it anyways
cuz that’s what I do;
flippant, curious, voracious.
And light and love
came violently screaming out
of her and pouring into her.
A being misunderstanding
their self,
misunderstanding my being.
Afterwards,
the oak trees called me
to them,
asked me what I had done and
why did I do it.
I said
it was for carnal earthen reasons.
And they conveyed,
oh star stuff Nova,
you still have so many ways
to grow and so many things
to learn.
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.
I’m going to leave you
as ghosts
back there under that
moonlight.
Your lips left there
on my shoulder
drawing
your big, scared,
sacred, sensual feelings
out of you
there in that
ghostland
where I leave you.
A last time,
an eternal seance
with your feelings there,
not here,
left with the ghost life.
Witch’s word, witch’s covenant.
I step into the sunlight.
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.
Our emotions are full
when the moon is high.
Ripe am I
in your heart and mind.
Over the fields,
the arms of the trees,
sleeping and dreaming.
The northern skies
believe in southern breeze.
The breeze weaves and
weaves
around our bodies entwined,
but separate and solo.
Midnight is right,
the light between leaves.
You’ve awoke in the morning.
Your feelings,
so many of them
underneath the bright moon,
now clear in daylight,
together and simple.
And this is why I cast
dark pearly eyes to the sky
when you are sleeping.
novamartinpoetry.com 