Friday, December 29, 2017

Poetry Series: To All Our Heartbreaks This Year

~To All Our Hearbreaks This Year~
Liz Fink Davenport

 (Last poem of the year)

Screw you. 

The poem could end here, Love. It could. We could tell all our clawed up heartaches to bugger off and never talk to them again. But there is a problem. They are all right there in your hands. So I suggest something different. Here is how we mend and learn and open our clenched fists for the first time since clenching them and hiding away the little demons. Take a deep breath. Unclench for me. Just a bit. You have got this. We are going to let out some things from that fist. 

Roll call: 

Heartache from love unrequited. Heartbreak from a mother’s loss. Heartdeath from “you are wonderful, just not what I want”. Heartdrowning from finding the last talk was the last and they are gone. Heartwrenching from all that you want is just at your fingertips and then the rug is ripped out. Heartsmodering from unforgiveness. Heartsmashing from hearing “I hate you, dad.” through a slammed door. Heartbleeding from trying. God, trying so hard and yet it’s always one more thing. Hearthardening from love placed in the wrong hands. Again. Heartmurder from self sabotage. Heartinceneration from who you never ever ever thought would ever betray you. 

All accounted for. Can you feel them all wriggling in your fist? Angry. Biting. Sulking. Wailing at the wind. They are pissed and you have kept them in your sweaty palm for 365 suns. Now, open up and look at them and thank them. Yes. I said thank them. Thank them for lessons learned, life lived, promises kept, tears that reminded you why we are alive, new chapters, and for sweet baby Jesus’ sake...for the very fact you were here on this earth to have them. Look at them and say thank you as they each fly off like small sparks from a campfire in the cold black night. They will fly. They don’t want to be in your fist anymore. 

Maybe you whisper, screw you to one or two as they take wing. But, my sweet and beautiful dirty human, you have lived this year. You have seen the best of others and the ugliest. You have breathed in and out and moved forward and that is commendable. So, as you close your eyes for the last time in this year and open again in the new...unclench your fists. Be gratitude and light. And say thank you. The little shits sure did make this year interesting. 

Now fly away. We have a new year of love to put in these now freed hands.

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