Everything is different now
You used to have me
Now you have her
The laughter throughout the night
An echo branded into my brain
Gone, like the leaves on the trees
You share that with her now
Staying up well past midnight
Exploring our darkest secrets
Fitting them together like a puzzle
I guess your pieces fit better with hers
We used to have a never ending song
Always in constant harmony
I suppose not everything lasts forever
Then again, you've known her longer
Yet I linger here, waiting
Your breaths have gone heavy now
I lay there wondering
Why I can't understand
We have an age difference
That I know
You have gone through more
So much more
That I know
But you expect me to help
You forget I'm younger
I don't know heartbreak
All I know
Are the lies I tell myself
Just to get through the day
You make it seem
Like your problems are bigger
No love can hold me back
No words can reach me now
No hands can comfort me now
No lies can get me out
Cause
Your love
Your words
Your hands
Your lies
ONLY BROKE ME DOWN!
And I've kissed another guy since I lost you
And it made me wonder
If you kissed me again
Would you taste him too?
"You're beautiful,"
He whispered
And then she fell apart
My dreams were my safe place but you still manage to get in those too
I.
The Junior Prom deposited me (and fifteen
others) on the floor of her basement. I could
barely see daylight at the time, and at three in
the morning I began to prowl. I was too scared
to turn on any lights. She emerged like a mermaid
from seaweed. I needed comfort, she enjoyed my
need. We had gone out— she was bitter. The whole
dialogue happened in shadows. No one was hooking
up in the other room, either. You spiteful little princess.
II.
Whether off the bathroom counter
or the back of your hand, darling,
your unusual vehemence that
winter night, cob-webbed by
half-real figures, was animated by an
She ignores him, he ignored her back
She is quiet to him, he is quiet back
She smiled at him, he smiled back.
And
She texts him, he texted back
She calls him, he called her back
She loved him, and that he didn't reply.
When my heart's string
snapped, I walked
ten days alone
on the ridgeline
trail. All day,
chestnuts in blight
told me their story.
When I went to look at what had long been hidden,
A jewel laid long ago in a secret place,
I trembled, for I thought to see its dark deep fire--
But only a pinch of dust blew up in my face.
I almost gave my life long ago for a thing
That has gone to dust now, stinging my eyes--
It is strange how often a heart must be broken
Before the years can make it wise.
"She can't be unhappy," you said,
"The smiles are like stars in her eyes,
And her laugh is thistledown
Around her low replies."
"Is she unhappy?" you said--
But who has ever known
Another's heartbreak--
All he can know is his own;
And she seems hushed to me,
As hushed as though
Her heart were a hunter's fire
Smothered in snow.
Sun-swept beaches with a light wind blowing
From the immense blue circle of the sea,
And the soft thunder where long waves whiten--
These were the same for Sappho as for me.
Two thousand years--much has gone by forever,
Change takes the gods and ships and speech of men--
But here on the beaches that time passes over
The heart aches now as then.