James Coats

After The Break Up

 

It feels like your spine was ripped out your body

and you are left to wander the world.

An amorphous jelly slinking along all snail like.

You smile and act as if it is no big deal.

As the sadness tries to spill across your face

the way milk does the kitchen table.

You tell people life is good

when really it is anything but that.

Maybe, if good felt like being strapped

down in a mental hospital waiting for a lobotomy

cause that’s what the time in bed feels like.

A slow suffocating, imagining death would be

easier than going on.

 

You read on Web MD

that some have died of a broken heart

and you question if it feels like a heart attack.

The pain and tightness in your chest

has you thinking it’s happening right now.

You try to think about something else

but every time you do the relationship

or lack thereof delivers an electric shock

right to your cerebral cortex.

 

Amid the subsequent sleepless nights

and coma like days things aren’t working.

You decide to write about it.

Pour all the feelings on the page

instead of drowning yourself in cheap tequila.

What comes out is a rollercoaster of emotions.

As you look back on what brought you to this point.

Denial - maybe the relationship wasn’t as awful as you remember.

Anger - how dare she do this to you after all you did for her.

Depression - that you won’t be able to feel the good times anymore.

After moving through all 7 stages of grief for your dead relationship

you really just want to forget it ever happened at all.

 

The letter is finished now, time to send it off.

You walk out the house turn on the barbeque grill

and put the letter over the blue and orange flames.

The white paper turns black and then into grey smoke and ash

that ascends into a cotton candy blue sky.

There is no more looking back at the past

you are off to find your future.