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HEARTS STAY BROKEN

Time is a great healer, they say.
Is that true or just a wish?
The pain’s still here, the blank space huge,
hard to imagine this will ever change.

Get over with it, move on, I hear,
close your loss, complete, hurry up!
Life goes on without you, my Dear,
you’d better get it together and walk!

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression,
I’ve seen them all more than once.
Acceptance is near, meaning emerges,
and still, my heart stays broken.

There are no easy steps to grief,
ones you run through in a linear way.
Instead you jump back and forth all the time,
often crushed, miles away from done.

Supressing grief might seem a good plan at first,
but it sneaks back in in the creepiest ways,
passive aggressive, restless or numb,
all facets of grief, there’s no bypass to pain.

The pain is so intense, I can barely breathe,
it cuts right through me, sucks all my energy.
The worst loss is yours, that’s for sure,
no matter what it is that has died for you.

A loved one, a marriage, a job or a pet,
the world as you knew it, your youth,
it’s gone forever, never the same again,
leaves a yawning gap behind and your heart broken.

My life until now I could only have with you,
My life from now on I can only have without you.
A threshold unfolds between my past and my future,
it takes courage to pass it, not sure if I dare.

What can I do that I couldn’t do with you?
Who can I be that I couldn’t be with you?
What’s the meaning in your death, in my loss?
What’s the benefit, what’s being offered to me?

Phew, no easy answer to that one, no.
Maybe, it’s that I now trust to walk alone.
Everything you brought to me I now carry.
You in me. Eternally.

Acceptance is near, meaning emerges,
and still, my heart stays broken.

If you know someone who griefs, stay.
Ask her what she is experiencing,
ask him to tell you about her loved one,
ask her to share.
And then, truly listen.

Literature:

Published in POETRY