HARD

"And...try not to make this harder than it already is."

I will own my pain,
wrap it in tissue
to tend alone, but hard
is relative like

kissing cousin to a kind of silence

a wordless "I know" that is the truth

of no trust, no faith, a picture

of scattered pieces of broken

hearts that look like no hope

for them or the leaves on which

they land

like

mother to a kind of trying

to understand, a hardening of the 

arteries that once made love flow

freely and without thought

relative like

brother to dreams

in black and white, blurred

with tears that will not stop

words caught in throats

stuck between breath and gasp

hard like 

sister to what happened

how and why and

whether to wrap

head around thought

around memory of last

times with no hopes

for another time

and hard like

hearts made of flesh

turned to concrete

where kind and gentle

is replaced with

nothing nice

to say

© Valerie Bridgeman

March 11, 2013