#healingthroughwords

A poem by Jazmyn Aurice-Marie

The heartbreak clock Coils and winds a tale ’tis old as time.

It haunts grand halls of midnight balls Where the ghosts gather in ever mourning Who she once was Still lingers.

It weaves into the here and now, Creaking on the hour. Like clockwork it goes, the heartbreak clock, Which seems to shrink in size Slipping into rabbit holes And loops of time That still can’t seem to stop it from ringing.

Awakening her Like a cold chill On a foggy day, Where rain drowns out The chilling chime Until she feels nothing other than The weight of the pendulums swinging In her chest And throat, Which tightens from the ache of a memory Her mind won’t reply But soul always remembers.

Tick Tock strikes, Ringing in her ear, Leading her down the garden path That somewhere in her haunted memory She will have your first dance too.

Until the promised time, The heartbreak clock carries on Counter Clockwise Til it beats no more And maybe then, Love me.

I could hate her. With everything. With what’s left of me. With clenched teeth, sleepless nights, swallowed screams. I could turn her name into a curse. But hate… Hate is still attention. Hate still burns. And for her? Not even worth a spark. So I erased her. Not with shouting, but with silence. With that loud absence that says: You’re done here. I chose contempt… cold, sharp,…

There was a time you were my chapter not the beginning, not the end, but the part of the story I kept returning to.

You were never constant, yet always present in the margins of my life. I waited for you between commas, lingered in the silence of ellipses, and lived inside the parenthesis you once named me.

I loved you quietly, fiercely, foolishly. I thought every hug was a promise, every kiss a punctuation mark that meant we were writing something more. But your story was always elsewhere busy cities, faraway skies, unfinished maps that did not lead to me. And still, I stayed. Still, I hoped.

But love, when it does not move forward, becomes a weight. And I have carried you long enough.

This page ours has been dog eared, read and reread, and now it must be turned. Not torn out, not forgotten, only left behind as all chapters must be, once their time is done.

One day, you may find these words.

When you do, know this:

You mattered. You were more than a parenthesis to me. But I cannot be an aside forever. I deserve to be the sentence, the story, the book.

So I let you go with tenderness, with ache, with gratitude.

Because some stories are not meant to end together.

They are only meant to be remembered.

The story continues, but this chapter is no longer ours.