Broken Heart by Starry-eyed Kid
Amputated
Not a mere limb or a finger
But a decade of life feels excised
Removed with a surgeon’s precision
The days we pieced together to form a history
The accumulation of the moments we shared
The symbiosis that has sustained me
Gone
I thought our life together was vouchsafed
One of those premeditated facts
I’d come to love and live with everyday
Like the stars and the moon hung in the silky night sky
Like the sun going through its daily motions
Like the tide ebbing and flowing
They just are.
Once in a while when I’m able to see myself
As more than just the black obliterating pain I feel
More than just the patchwork of band-aids and barbed wire
My heart has become
I hope my suffering is not being squandered
That somewhere inside of me
It is making me more pliant and tender
Expelling some cherished illusion
I must have carried within me
And held about myself like a cloak
Maybe it’s human nature to think one’s own situation
Is the unique and incomparable one
The transcendent exception
I am not special, I am not entitled
My goodness, my kindness
My enlightenment doesn’t set me apart
I’m like all the rest
Carrying around the same
Huge quantities of darkness
Sometimes, I think I want everything to return it to what it once was
To pull you back into the ordinary, loving, care-worn niche
We seemed to have carved out together all these years
But it’s a phantom limb, a residual notion
I don’t know how to return to that place
Or how to make it the same
It cannot ever be like it was
We can never resume our old places
So lately I attempt to lay it all aside
Struggling to stay open and willing to life
Picking my way through unfamiliar terrain
Sadness washes over me with torrential suddenness
It feels cruel and astonishing to know we are ending
Yet I have come to one, irreducible thing
There is nothing to do now but accept
To learn to accept
To lie down every night and accept
Maybe I thought myself beyond it
But in small invisible ways and in large, glaring ones
I’ve tried to complete myself with someone else
To belong all of my life
Now I want only to belong to myself
To be alone with my life
There is an unmistakable new independence
Taking hold, its roots grabbing earth firmly
A self-containment that hasn’t been here before
I have a new abiding loyalty to myself that feels wise
As a woman is wise after a long life of years thoroughly lived
Yet its shoots still young and tender
Something I must cradle and protect
I’m sure someday I’ll be able to think of our time together
Without profound sorrow, without loss, without regret
When all I will really remember is that
We needed to love each other and that union
Brought me a sweetness I had never known
Brought me deeper into life
What is there to regret?
