There's been a break up.

The feeling rolls over you.

Flattens you to the ground like a steamroller meeting a rolling pin at the senior prom.

Suddenly you’re breathless. Wondering how you took for granted just yesterday that the breath was flowing in and out. In & out. You took for granted the effortless of it all.

You search your pockets. You scrounge for keys. Somewhere deep, deep in these pockets there must be something that you can hold on to. But you know what you have lost already. The very Somebody that was never a thing but the Every, Every, Every Thing.

“It’s over.” “It’s done.” “I’m sorry.” “Just go.” Did he say it? Did you say it? Did words even get said?

And you wonder why they call it a break up.

When nothing seems to be up at all.

You don’t feel like looking up. You don’t feel like getting up. The floor seems nice, you can vow to just sit there for a while.

But, oh, you feel the breaking.

The slow, steady breaking that gets so intrusive with the threads of a thing you used to call a heart just yesterday. When it sang. When it echoed. But it wasn’t broken though.

I want the words to make things better. The words to tell you it will be ok, you’re gonna breath again soon.

You’re gonna breath again, baby. You’re gonna love again.

And you could tuck these words in your back pocket though you probably won’t think to use them much today. No, probably not today.

So designate the days,

Designate the days.

Tonight might be for wallowing and tomorrow for sitting up. The third day for stumbling. The fourth for One Foot in Front of the Other. One foot in front of the other.

But if you don’t claim those days, like a Mama fiercely calling for Child when the tornado hits her Kansas plains, they’ll flip. Morph. Be claimed by the Sorrow. Claimed by the Sadness. Claimed into days you won’t never get back. And yes, you’ve got the heartbreak, but how much of a heart would be broken just to give those days to someone who will use them right? Someone that would use them to feel the sunlight on their face.

You’re alive, baby, and he never made you.

He. Never. Made. You.

Sure, there was a laughter you’re missing now. A sweeping off the feet. Stories you’d like to tell for decades more but he never made you. He was never the thing to keep you breathing. Never the thing to keep you dancing. & you made the mistake when you started to think that he was.

You’ve already got that thing inside of you and it’s jumbled & it’s golden. It’s yours and it’s sacred & it’s sweeter than you treated it.

You say he took something precious. You say he was the Precious Thing. But that Precious Thing has never left you, only learnt to shroud itself in cobwebs from all the waiting… waiting for you to realize that it never planned to go away.

The Precious Thing.

The will to dream. The will to be. The will to live. The will to remember what it looked like yesterday before a hand slipped into yours so effortlessly. Yes, there were days before that hand.

I’m not asking you to shrivel. I’m not asking you to slow. I’m standing here begging that you’ll just get up. Because I believe in you that way and I know you to be strong. More capable than your sitting on the floor. And you’re missing what it is happening, what has always happened when a heart gets broken: A broken heart is the perfect starting point for rearranging the furniture, hanging lights on the wall. The chance to move and break free of your yesterday and stare down at the power of your own two hands after placing too much steadiness within a hand that held yours, and kissed yours, and slipped corsages upon yours.