Talk to Mike Grotsky on the Fictionville blog
There’s the nights of panic
when you’ll wake suddenly
with the cold knowing
of what you’ve lost
The claustrophobia
of what cannot be retrieved
Of what is irrevocable
It takes your breath away
And the adrenaline of panic
leaves you wide awake
with the shadows
playing over the immense loneliness
of your heart
For weeks
I lay curled up
feeling like an amputee after
you left. The pain was intense
and it never ever faded -
I just forgot about it
here and there. You dig?
II.
Let’s hang our heads
For one who gives
Who gives everything
Who hands over their heart
Who offers it willingly like a child
Who reaps only disdain
When you don’t even dignify the offer
The blind sacrifice the wild hope
When you leave mumbling, ‘Gotta go’
Like a trespasser in the house of love
III.
Inside a space blooms
Like a negative birth
A canyon that grows
As my territory shrinks
As your absence succeeds itself
Only too well
And it becomes true
That I’m unwanted
I know your feelings were true
I felt them
Each time I ate you
(You ate me)
I felt you then
As we danced
That was real
As real as any poetry
You might write
That was love
IV.
Can it be so cruel so true
That there are (so) many
Kinds of love
That sharing love
may not be sufficient
To be loved?
Doesn’t the rose
Love the thorn?
Can one really become merely a
Minor character in someone’s history
Even if you loved them with all your heart?
V.
Why do I still feel you
When I’ve already begun
To fade the memories
Of your touch?
I won’t ask
To spare those memories
Not when wood
Marries fire
How ironic to be
Simultaneously
Craving and erasing
Love
While smoke winds a trail
From you to nowhere
VI.
I’d anoint the goddesses
If you’d come back
Is it madness to think it’s best
If you don’t?
The hole in my chest
And the emptiness
Between my legs
Will eat me for a season or two
But tomorrow I’ll fill them
With one who’ll stay
Then it’ll be your turn
To pace the night
And moan
for the one
That got away