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