1. No one gets out of this year alive
I burned my house down when it stopped feeling like home.
When that was done, I knelt in the wreckage of the living room
and salted the earth with my tears.
Does this sound dramatic?
It was.
I suppose I could have mended the seam, but once the thread was loose,
I pulled and pulled instead.
The guilt of this may eat me up, but I could see no other way.
2. What's resilience?
Virginia Woolf filled her pockets up with stones and walked into the river one March day.
She left a letter for her husband
that said no two people could possibly be as happy as they had been.
How can love not be enough?
3. Loss measured by weight
It’s hard to breathe under the weight of what is missing.
There is nothing so heavy as absence.
The weight in my hands where yours once were.
4. The specter of lost love
It was beautiful, the way we loved each other.
I swear it was the prettiest thing.
Your hand in my hand.
We used to sing in the kitchen.
Sanctuary.
5. Every song says the same thing
Love proved meager when it had seemed full.
Our relationship stopped working.
You became a stranger and stopped loving me.
6. The heart as the original fickle partner
How can I trust my own heart?
Its ways are as mysterious to me as the movements of weather patterns.
I find myself freezing on a stormy sea
when the day had dawned warm
in a bed that felt like home.
7. Be more honest
I can’t take you home.
I no longer know where it is.
Be careful with those of us too accustomed to loss.
We have callouses in unexpected places
and weird ideas about things.
Besides, my body is not a bridge.
8. Betrayal
A friend says, she built a secret foundation underneath your home, board by board.
A friend says, she built a secret foundation underneath your home, board by board.
That's why it hurt less for her.
And you, you're on the ground, with the full weight of your house on top of you.
9. Be impeccable with your word
How many times have I tried to fix my heart,
like crying into my hands could change my own palmistry?
All I ever wanted was to be good.
I’d do anything for love except stay.
10. Disillusionment
All autumn, I ached for solubility.
Every morning, I told myself to stop reading about Virginia Woolf
and how she walked into the river.
Stop contemplating the weight of the stones in her pockets,
wondering if they were as heavy as the heart in my chest.
The weight of absence dragging me to the bottom.
I got out of bed every morning, put boots on my feet, and made breakfast again.
I wondered how many times a person can become disillusioned
before they stop believing in the existence of light.
11. I want to finish this with a little bow
I want to say, look how mended I am.
Wounds tied up in scar tissue, made stronger, wiser.
A wizened heart sitting at the end of the bar, knocking
sage advice to youngsters, saying, believe believe believe.
But it’s high winter in my house and I have nothing left to burn.
I want to wind hay into kindling until my hands bleed,
just to feel the hot salt of me.
