The Best Break-Up Advice you'll ever Receive

Ugh, it’s a horrible feeling.  You’re on the train heading home and you feel as though you might burst if you don’t allow those tears to flow.  You put on your sunglasses so other passengers don’t notice.  You’re stomach won’t unknot itself and you’re not looking forward to any interaction especially with your family today.  You fear one simple hug or “how are you?” will send you straight back into a tearful fit, full of heaving and choked up sounds.

You get home and all you want to do is curl up on your mom’s lap.  You don’t want to talk about what happened or all the cruel and awful things that were said.  You don’t want to admit to anyone else how hurt you are despite the fact that they can tell by your red swollen eyes.

She hates seeing you cry.  She was never the maternal type.  She showed love other ways rather than caresses or kind words.  In this family, the women are warriors, their internal strength delivering them from every evil.

She gives you precise directions on what to do next:

1. Stop crying.
2. Get a haircut.  Pamper yourself.  Buy some new shoes or clothes.
3. Go to church and pray – or yoga to meditate.
4. Clean your apartment – make it immaculate.  Throw out everything you don’t want.  Get rid of things that you don’t need.
5. Go and find a new boyfriend because “un clavo siempre saca al otro,” (one nail always gets another one out).

If this had been two years ago, you would have scoffed at her advice and thought that a broken heart was far too serious to remedy with superficial adjustments – but she’s been right too many times this year and you follow each instruction.  The pain dulls away as though someone had put ice on the wound and each day you awake with less and less.  

At some point in adulthood, you realize your parents are not just your parents, but human beings that have probably been through a lot of rough times they hid from you when you were a child.  You realize that no matter what you’ve done or how horrible you feel that they understand you more than you know. 

Thanks mom.

Cyclical

When I told the moon

What you’d done before you’d left

She gave me my blood back

Then told me to remember my lineage

Of goddess warriors and artisans

Women before me fared much worse

And this blood that I carry is a gift, not a curse

All those nights you cursed the moon

For her half absence

Demanding she lay herself

full and bare but I knew

she never cared to please you

She’d wane and disappear

Unattentive to your petty whines and sneers

She was always full to me

Just hiding from your periphery

Just like her, so much of me you couldn't see

You never understood my poetry

Your silence never gave way to depth

believe me when I say

you were the cruelest of all

Back to being a tortured poet!

'cause everyone just loves tortured souls, no?


there's this sadness inside of me like an endless tear
and everytime I think it's gone it's merely been wiped away temporarily
by the surprise of a new toy on Christmas morning
The glimmer of hotel chandeliers with the taste of champagne
Lingering like a quiet kiss
and then I go to sleep and remember
waking up choked by my animal cries

Love only breaks your heart
the foolish brave souls are so brash as to open that door
the one full of skeletons and do not enter signs
treasure chests once gold, now mothballs
of the dress you wore when your eyes first met
they say you're healed when you're ready to open that door again
But you’re just another soldier, a pawn
To buy into a nonexistent happiness
Expectations unfulfilled like empty wrapped boxes
With a bow on Christmas morning


My father told me that you’re born alone
And you die alone only accompanied
By memories of all the choices you’ve made
And I love all the men
with their tall dark figures
and authoritative voices
that never say much
but say just enough
to convince you it’s worth the battle
and this time you’ll know where the shooter will be
who he is and his intentions

You’re wearing your best
In your little black dress
With a bullet proof vest

That bastard always shoots you in the arm
Enough to wound but not to kill
And you wake up crying wishing for the latter