Heartbreak with Granny

You (the heart):

I think I’m carrying my first heartbreak,

though it is not love I’ve lost,

but the belief I ever had it.

I was so thirsty,

so when attention showed up dressed as love,

I mistook it as my heart finally finding its well.

Granny (voice of wisdom):

My dear, thirst will make you kneel at any stream,

And whisper thank you.

Desperation makes even poison taste like honey

When you’ve forgotten the taste of rain.

You are not grieving a man,

you are grieving the mirage

you kept alive to feel full.

You:

Now I sit with the knowledge

it was never love.

How strange to feel a heart break

over something that never existed.

How odd to bury a ghost

and still cry at the funeral.

Granny:

Disillusionment is its own kind of death.

It is mourning the dream you built,

brick by trembling brick,

only to find the house was air.

But do not confuse the collapse

with your unworthiness.

The ruin is not you.

The ruin is what could not stand.

You:

And yet, even in this loss,

my hand keeps writing.

The most beautiful words fall out of me,

beautiful and jagged,

like glass that once was a bottle.

I used to joke,

may a man break my heart

so I can write just like this.

The joke has turned on me.

Granny:

Yes, pain is a ruthless teacher.

It rips the skin,

but through the wound the song escapes.

What you create now

is proof you survived.

Even lies can gift you truth

if you know how to hold them.

You:

So tell me, grandmother,

is it better to have loved and lost,

or never to have loved at all?

Granny:

Better to walk the desert

and drink from a mirage

than to die of thirst by standing still.

Better to cradle the counterfeit once,

feel its weight,

so when the true thing arrives,

you will know it.

Real love does not vanish in the morning,

does not collapse under your hands.

It endures,

and now you will recognize it

because you have known the ache of its absence.