Broken Hearts
Jeremy Reed
There should be heart-shaped rooms in which we sit
as a collective to repair
the damage done by love, and half the night
we’d exchange stories, share a common pain
that’s always different, but never less
in how the ruin’s total, like a house
slipped off a cliff edge to the sea
or like a turtle that has lost its shell
but keeps on going, making tracks on sand
to find a refuge up beyond the surf.
We’re all suddenly disinherited
from little ways, familiar dialogue,
security of someone there to share
bad news, rejection, a red letter day,
a downmood’s tumble of blue dice,
or someone there to celebrate a quiet
in which the meaning is in being two
without a need to speak. But out of love
we seem to be falling down stairs
that never terminate. He left or she
took off with someone else, it’s like the blow
will never stop arriving in the heart
as an impacted fist. We’d call the place
Heartbreak Hotel, and hope to patch the scars
of unrequited love and leave
a little less in tatters, disrepair.
I’ll find the place one day, and book a room
and talk amongst the losers of a face
I can’t forget, and of a special hurt
bleeding like footprints scattered over snow.
words made flesh 