It is such a powerful moment at the end when she says her name. "....when Heather was a little girl..."...not in the way it sounds, but you can tell it is in the way she feels it...like that one word "Heather" , for her, holds all the feelings she stated before it
I don't even know what to say, I am just a puddle of tears right now. I love Andrea Gibson, and have heard several of her poems before, but I think this might be my favorite yet. God, it's just so beautiful and profound and heartbreaking, and words can't even describe it properly.
Her poetry is the only thing that makes me grateful to have loved someone so deeply and then lost them. Just knowing that someone else has felt this way makes the hurt a part of the human experience rather than something that tears at me in anger and sadness.
My friend Derrick says love is the only war worth dying for. But every time I say, "please come back", I feel like I"m trying to find a dirty needle in a haystack, and God knows I can't go out like that. I suppose we wear our traumas the way the guillotine wears gravity. Our lovers' necks are so soft. I lost my head so many times. I got sober just hoping my eyes would dry. Still, I drink so much in my sleep, I can't sleepwalk a straight line to the guest room or collapse, hang so heavy inside her lungs. She speaks and her voice trips across her heartbeat, each word limps into the air. We are gone, she says. And I am no mortician; I have no idea how to put make-up on the dead. I have no idea how to unerase, so I just puddle at the door, my face looking like a deck of falling cards, like everything's been playing me. We tried so hard. But when I said "give me a ring", she thought I meant a call. Now I haven't had her number for two years. We've been saying how many times are we going to keep cutting these red flags into valentines. You know, all those wars we fought have turned our shine into rust, we can't even touch each other's hearts without a tetanus shot. We can't begin to remember how we forgot there is no shelter in the womb. The heart forms long before the ribcage. My mother swore she could feel me kicking weeks before my feet formed. That's how hard my heart beat -- and it still does. They say the womb is where we learn love is knowing the cord that feeds you could at any moment wrap around your neck. I hold my breath for the entire 56 seconds it takes her to walk to the window to stare at the road to tell me she has nothing left to tell me, we are done, carrying our level heads in our tornado chests. For the first time, I know she is right. As the dawn, after our first date, we were so young, and I hadn't written an honest love poem yet. I hadn't met anyone I could fall so hard for 'til the night we kissed on our skateboards, she teased me for going so slow. I said I never want to catch up with the letting go. I want the plead in my throat to forever anger my spine and the seams of your slippers, love, even when the dove crashed through the window, even when our friends said, you can call it love, but you know Einstein called himself a pacifist when he built the bomb. When they ask why we stayed together for so long I say, I don’t know. I just know that we cried at the exact same time in every movie. I know we blushed everyday for the first two years. I know I always stole the covers and she never woke me up. I know the exact look on her face, the first night she used my toothbrush. The next day, I brushed my teeth like thirtysome times, 'cause I didn't want to let her go. You have to understand when it hurt to love her, it hurt the way the light hurts your eyes in the middle of the night, but I had to see, even through the ruin, if what we were burying were seeds. There were so many plants in our house, you could rake the leaves even through that winter when I was trying to make angels in the snow of her cold shoulder. She was still leaving love notes in my suitcase; I'd always find them. The day before I left, I remembered a story her mother told me. She said, Andrea, when Heather was a little girl, she couldn't fall asleep without tying a string to her finger all night long, she'd give that string the tiniest tug to make sure I was still there. And I'd tug back. That was love. That was love. As easy as that. Sometimes. Sometimes.
This is unbelievably sad. (And brilliant). But I want to experience a relationship like that, even if it'd mean experiencing its end and its aftermath too.
It is such a powerful moment at the end when she says her name. "....when Heather was a little girl..."...not in the way it sounds, but you can tell it is in the way she feels it...like that one word "Heather" , for her, holds all the feelings she stated before it
I don't even know what to say, I am just a puddle of tears right now. I love Andrea Gibson, and have heard several of her poems before, but I think this might be my favorite yet. God, it's just so beautiful and profound and heartbreaking, and words can't even describe it properly.
Only poet that makes me cry with every poem
"....but I had to see, even through the ruin, if what we were burying were seeds.."
Her poetry is the only thing that makes me grateful to have loved someone so deeply and then lost them. Just knowing that someone else has felt this way makes the hurt a part of the human experience rather than something that tears at me in anger and sadness.
Only poem that has ever made me cry.
so beautiful. her poetry always moves me
My friend Derrick says love is the only war worth dying for. But every time I say, "please come back", I feel like I"m trying to find a dirty needle in a haystack, and God knows I can't go out like that. I suppose we wear our traumas the way the guillotine wears gravity. Our lovers' necks are so soft. I lost my head so many times. I got sober just hoping my eyes would dry. Still, I drink so much in my sleep, I can't sleepwalk a straight line to the guest room or collapse, hang so heavy inside her lungs.
She speaks and her voice trips across her heartbeat, each word limps into the air. We are gone, she says. And I am no mortician; I have no idea how to put make-up on the dead. I have no idea how to unerase, so I just puddle at the door, my face looking like a deck of falling cards, like everything's been playing me. We tried so hard. But when I said "give me a ring", she thought I meant a call. Now I haven't had her number for two years. We've been saying how many times are we going to keep cutting these red flags into valentines. You know, all those wars we fought have turned our shine into rust, we can't even touch each other's hearts without a tetanus shot.
We can't begin to remember how we forgot there is no shelter in the womb. The heart forms long before the ribcage. My mother swore she could feel me kicking weeks before my feet formed. That's how hard my heart beat -- and it still does. They say the womb is where we learn love is knowing the cord that feeds you could at any moment wrap around your neck. I hold my breath for the entire 56 seconds it takes her to walk to the window to stare at the road to tell me she has nothing left to tell me, we are done, carrying our level heads in our tornado chests.
For the first time, I know she is right. As the dawn, after our first date, we were so young, and I hadn't written an honest love poem yet. I hadn't met anyone I could fall so hard for 'til the night we kissed on our skateboards, she teased me for going so slow. I said I never want to catch up with the letting go. I want the plead in my throat to forever anger my spine and the seams of your slippers, love, even when the dove crashed through the window, even when our friends said, you can call it love, but you know Einstein called himself a pacifist when he built the bomb.
When they ask why we stayed together for so long I say, I don’t know. I just know that we cried at the exact same time in every movie. I know we blushed everyday for the first two years. I know I always stole the covers and she never woke me up.
I know the exact look on her face, the first night she used my toothbrush. The next day, I brushed my teeth like thirtysome times, 'cause I didn't want to let her go. You have to understand when it hurt to love her, it hurt the way the light hurts your eyes in the middle of the night, but I had to see, even through the ruin, if what we were burying were seeds. There were so many plants in our house, you could rake the leaves even through that winter when I was trying to make angels in the snow of her cold shoulder. She was still leaving love notes in my suitcase; I'd always find them.
The day before I left, I remembered a story her mother told me. She said, Andrea, when Heather was a little girl, she couldn't fall asleep without tying a string to her finger all night long, she'd give that string the tiniest tug to make sure I was still there. And I'd tug back. That was love. That was love. As easy as that. Sometimes. Sometimes.
She is always killin' it. Consistent.
This is so raw, so beautiful.
so much power in words. geezz
Andrea never disappoints.
She is absolutely brilliant.
This is unbelievably sad. (And brilliant).
But I want to experience a relationship like that, even if it'd mean experiencing its end and its aftermath too.
I have no words
I am sitting here crying... this is me right now
Wow.. this is love
Absolutely beautiful
How dare someone dislike this?
This is so powerful and brutally true.
What is that song?!
I know this kind of love.
What song is playing in the background?
please someone tell me what she is saying
wow that was emotionally devastating
I miss def jam poetry
This is beautiful
:) She is so Mild and yet very effective. I am all ears now.
This was on the day I started day ring my girlfriend and the love of my life
whoa.
I don't ever want to listen to anything else.
Wow
i dunno but i would guess it is emily saavedra on the piano
No you don't lol.