Eggshells

Twelve years
and I am still here
with a broom and a dustpan
trying to sweep up
what love looked like
before it shattered.

You stopped believing
in repair,
in therapy,
in us,
in the slow work
of staying.

I keep showing up
with empty hands
and hopeful lies
I tell myself:
try harder,
be softer,
be someone
he might choose again.

But the house is quiet now.
We walk like winter animals
through eggshell weather,
careful not to crack
what is already broken.

I heard the way
you spoke about her
like a door
you wished you had opened
instead of me.

And still I’m here,
trying to glue a future
to a past
that won’t hold.

I want to believe
there’s a way back.

But every day
feels like waiting
for the moment
you fall in love again
and this time
actually leave.

Reviews

[JayG]

For you, who knows all that, it had meaning and purpose.

For the one you wrote this letter of complaint to, I’ll bet they’ll say it was your fault.

For the reader? What’s in it for them? Why would they want to read more words that say precisely the same thing, phrased a bit differently?

For me? My reaction is Geez...get over it, already! Perhaps, had you made this meaningful to the reader; Had you made the reader feel your emotion, as against hearing about it secondhand, the reader would have reason to care.

I don’t say that to belittle your unhappiness, but what you’ve written, and have written over and over is called, a Dismal Damsel poem. It helps you not at all; generates only a shrug in the minds of those who see you words but are unmoved because you inform rather than involve; and keeps your focus in the past and on mistakes, rather than building the future. The number of comments you get illustrate the reader’s level of involvement.

A read of a good book on poetry, like Mary Oliver’s, A Poetry Handbook might be worth a look.

But that aside, what good does dwelling on past disaster do, other than continue it, and prevent future happiness? The past can’t be changed, only learned from.

I’m not wise. That’s certain. And I make more mistakes than most. But one thing I have learned, is that there are two words that when applied to the past in the proper way, can make immense changes to the future:

F**k it.