By Ceres
They say that if a writer falls in love with you, you’ll never die.
But no one talks about what happens when you break a writer’s heart.
How this gift of immortality becomes their curse.
How they keep you alive in their poetry even while it kills them.
How they recreate the crime scene on paper.
Words spread out like map coordinates
Looking for where things went wrong.
Writing down the word ‘forever’ and
Wondering how those three syllables sounded like an eternity when you said it.
Every poem they write is a sketch of your face; as if their pen only knows how to make posters of the people they miss; each full stop a reminder of your freckles; each semicolon an image of your sideways smile and the dimple under your cheek.
Every poem is just ‘I still love you’ written in code.
Every poem is a letter unsent; because if hearts were mailboxes you wouldn’t have one.
Every poem is an attempt to soothe the ache in their left chest; to let inked words bleed instead; to shrink the memories into sentences.
Every poem is the Heimlich maneuver; so they write until the words locked in their throats fly out like freed birds and bruised lungs can finally taste oxygen again.
Every poem is a paper boat called acceptance.
Every poem including this one
But no one talks about what happens when you break a writer’s heart.
How this gift of immortality becomes their curse.
How they keep you alive in their poetry even while it kills them.
How they recreate the crime scene on paper.
Words spread out like map coordinates
Looking for where things went wrong.
Writing down the word ‘forever’ and
Wondering how those three syllables sounded like an eternity when you said it.
Every poem they write is a sketch of your face; as if their pen only knows how to make posters of the people they miss; each full stop a reminder of your freckles; each semicolon an image of your sideways smile and the dimple under your cheek.
Every poem is just ‘I still love you’ written in code.
Every poem is a letter unsent; because if hearts were mailboxes you wouldn’t have one.
Every poem is an attempt to soothe the ache in their left chest; to let inked words bleed instead; to shrink the memories into sentences.
Every poem is the Heimlich maneuver; so they write until the words locked in their throats fly out like freed birds and bruised lungs can finally taste oxygen again.
Every poem is a paper boat called acceptance.
Every poem including this one
'Le Sang d’un Poète' (The Blood of a Poet) 1930
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