How To Be Heartbroken (And How To Move On)
Wake up, today you are not texting back your friends even when they say that they are filing a missing person’s report
By Ali Guerra
Wake up,
today you are nothing but a lifeless body
hurling itself across the different transitions
of your life. Your stomach
is a pothole that you
haven’t fed in days
for fear of spewing out all this grief
Wake up,
today you are not texting back your friends
even when they say
that they are filing a missing person’s report
Revel in the idea of not existing
for a little while. Romanticize
your own death as if it were an admonition
for the perils of unrequited love
Wake up,
today you wish you were a burning house
with years of memories scorching thin,
bright red in flames, but instead
you are on the outside
witnessing one half of your life
decompose into flakes
Wake up,
today you want to write but you don’t
because you know as soon as you put this
down on paper, it’s real.
No, you are holding on to that 1 percent still.
There are remnants of his ashes here still.
This carcass has a little life in it still.
Wake up,
this is your final wake-up call,
girl. You’ve set this house on fire,
now let it burn.