THE BRUISED HEART

Excerpts from a collection of poems about pain, anger and trauma—but also hope. I began this series in February 2022, after a difficult period in my life. Inspired by Stephen Crane and haiku.

A leaf quivers

With a tear off the face of the world

My own have dried today;

Let the sky weep instead.

— the forest down the lane (excerpt)

untitled

My heart is a shut door

I bar its windows

And brace myself

For love.

i hate to recall

It’s hard to let go

When you are a barb

That tore me all the way out.

Hard to not itch

When you left your stinger in my skin,

Insect.

the harvest

I gave and gave and gave

I poured the waters of my soul

On dead earth

Hoping you would grow:

Nothing.

stillborn heart

I was before memory

When you mutilated me.

I wear your sin

As a garter of scars

And the ache to die

My heart is stillborn

Stopped and dead in a jar

Examine it and find:

You killed it.

bay of thoughts

I sit on a dock

And wait for a ship 

That never comes

To take me from my harbor.

How fortunate I never boarded;

It sank.

the match

I was a child

When I first wanted to die.

My laughter

Was a snuffed flame

I hope at least

I burned your fingertips.

speak

My mouth was tinder

It struck a word

That set alight

Your dead fields

Behold—

Ash.