It had been over a month

And I hadn’t written anything

Nothing substantial

Or meaningful

Or otherwise legible

 

No love poems

Or hate poems

Or poems about my brokenness

 

Instead I wrote texts

And fun facts

And stories about two lovers in the 1940’s

 

I don’t know what happened in my mind to lead me down these roads

I just know I wasn’t writing poems anymore.

 

But today I got up

I took a shower

Combed my hair to the side

Like I always do

And I looked in the mirror

 

I saw the acne scars they said would go away

Thought of the mental scars that will never go away

And felt the supple skin where the scars have since faded away.

 

Is my body just a museum of scars?

I thought to myself

My first poetic thought in weeks

I suppose I should write that down

 

But some scars fade away

Some scars don’t last forever

Like the scars you left on my heart

Left behind when you ripped out my lungs

A surgical procedure to take my breath away

Like the first time you kissed me

Like the first time we danced in your kitchen

Like the first time you said you would never love me.

 

I am healing you see

At my own pace

In my own home

Perhaps there is a mathematical formula

A predictor for how long it takes to mend a broken heart.

Or perhaps some wounds were never meant to fully heal.

 

But I haven’t written about you in over a month

Your name has made its way to my mind less and less

It took 5 months for me to finally let go of your grip on this body

Perhaps 5 months is the expiration date for your grip on my heart.

 

I wasted 10 months of my life thinking about you.

10 months I could have been laughing because of you.

Instead of writing because of you

I wrote a poem to you once and said it was the last

The final poem I would write for you

Or about you

And I knew it was a lie

But I wrote it anyway

Perhaps this time it will be different

But I somehow doubt it.

I am healing bit by bit, piece by piece

And I don’t need your sympathy

I don’t need your alligator tears

I’m a survivor

I survived the war it took to exist

The fight it took to get to this city

And I don’t plan to surrender to a broken heart

She is just a muscle you see

And she grows stronger everyday

With every pump or pulse

It’s ok to hurt your muscles sometimes

To strain the fabric of their structures

To break a heart or any muscle

If you have to

In fact you do have to

If you ever want to let them grow.