Sometimes, it's difficult to articulate exactly how you are feeling when you're hurt. If you're like me, it's almost impossible to express and organize all of the thoughts you have. Reading poetry helps me understand what I'm feeling and why I'm feeling it. Here is a collection of poems by Rupi Kaur that guided me through my heartbreak.
"on the last day of love
my heart cracked inside my body"
the sun and her flowers - Page 13
"In order to fall asleep
I have to imagine your body
Crooked behind mine
Spoon ladled into spoon
Till I can hear your breath
I have to recite your name
Till you answer and
We have a conversation
Only then
Can my mind
Drift off to sleep"
-pretend
the sun and her flowers - Page 20
"you are snakeskin
and I keep shedding you somehow
my mind is forgetting
every exquisite detail
of your face
the letting go has
become the forgetting
which is the most pleasant and saddest thing
to have happened"
milk and honey - Page 119
"you were not wrong for leaving
you were wrong for coming back
and thinking
you could have me
when it was convenient
and leave when it was not"
milk and honey - Page 120
"i am confident i am over you. so much that some mornings i wake up with a smile on my face and my hands pressed together thanking the universe for pulling you out of me. thank god i cry. thank god you left. i would not be the empire i am today if you had stayed.
but then.
there are some nights i imagine what i might do if you showed up. how if you walked into the room this very second every awful thing you've ever done would be tossed out the closet window and all the love would rise up again. it would pour through my eyes as if it never really left in the first place. as if it's been practicing how to stay silent so long only so it could be this loud on your arrival. can someone explain that. how even when the love leaves. it doesn't leave. how even when i am so past you. i am so helplessly brought back to you."
milk and honey - Page 122
"you cannot leave
and have me too
i cannot exist in
two places at one"
-when you ask if we can still be friends
milk and honey - Page 136
"that is the thing about selfish people. they gamble entire beings. entire souls to please their own. one second they are holding you like the world in their lap and the next they have belittled you to a mere picture. a moment. something of the past, one second. they swallow you up and whisper they want to spend the rest of their life with you. but the moment they sense fear. they are already halfway out the door. without having the nerve to let you go with grace. as if the human heart means that little to them.
and after all this. after all the taking, the nerve. isn't it sad and funny how people have more guts to undress you with their finger than they do to pick up the phone and call. apologize. for the loss. and this is how you lose her."
-selfish
milk and honey - Page 141
"Even after the hurt
The loss
The pain
The breaking
Your body is still
The only one
I want to be
Undressed under"
milk and honey - Page 129
"you're everywhere
except right here
and it hurts"
the sun and her flowers - Page 141
"you left
and I wanted you still
yet i deserved someone
who was willing to stay"
The sun and her flowers - Page 17
