breaking up during the apocalypse

Two poems

My partner of two and half years and I broke up toward the end of July. And I don’t want to say too much about it, because no matter what I write, it will not be enough to summarize how I have felt and feel now. Not enough time has passed, and in prose, I do not have the language for it. But I have these two poems. And the gift of poems is that they will never say everything, nor do they have to.

I will say that I am immensely grateful for my friends for reminding me of all the love that exists in and around me. After the breakup, I went to Phoenix to stay at my friends’ house, where I got to witness a glimpse into their beautiful lives, their beautiful home, their beautiful community. I was reminded of beauty in a time where I felt like I would never be capable of beauty again: seeing it or finding it in myself.

The first poem was written on the airplane on the way to Phoenix, and as I wrote it I quietly sobbed beneath my mask and sunglasses next to a very nice woman who was holding a baby. The baby was also crying, for what I assume were unrelated reasons. The second poem was written the day I got home. My house was empty in a way it had never been because my other housemate was out of town.

After running an intentional living community for the last 5 years, one that housed 7 people at the height of the pandemic, the silence took some getting used to. I wandered the house like a ghost for a while, and wondered at the experience of aloneness.

Here are the poems.

breaking up during the apocalypse

before you leave for the airport
you look back at your home and know
you will never see it again
because when you return
she will not be there
and the house itself
will shift and groan
into a new form - one in which
you are some kind of alone

where the room she slept in
will be an empty canvas
for you to fill in and up
with the worthy joy
of who you are 
when no one
is looking 

it will never replace
the aching absence
of the life you built
the language you spoke
the fights you fought:
not you against her
but your most injured selves
clawing against who you wished
you could be for each other

before you leave for the airport
she tells you: thank you
for being my partner
through the apocalypse

and though the apocalypse
is not over, you do not say this.
you just cry, like you've been crying,
choking past a whole lifetime
of fear and and sickness and trauma
that wove itself around your relationship
like the bindweed in the garden
you could never get ahead of

what does it mean to love
when the world is ending?

trying. trying like the earth tries
to breathe. trying like your life
depends on a tomorrow
that you will believe in
until the day comes
when you no longer can.

and then letting go.

home

you were gone a week
and the garden has grown
past your recognition
and your knees.

the sunflower stalks
have bloomed
and bow in the rain
in greeting
or mourning.

the chickens are in the coop.
the goats wait in the shed,
like shadows.

outside, your cat sits
with an orange cat. not hers,
the neighbor's. your cat,
who had tolerated
only her cat, now sits
in silence with another.

inside, the bouquet you picked
for her, before it ended, is wilted
and rotting on the coffee table.

upstairs, there is a door to a room
you will not open today. 

you go to the porch to watch the rain,
just as you did countless times with her.
your dog watches the street, as though
he is waiting. 

earlier, you held him, and cried:
i need you to know i tried. i tried
harder than i ever tried before.
i tried until i couldn't anymore.

but he doesn't know the language
of trying. just being. just loving.

a language
you hope to one day
learn to speak.