The Bridge

This poem is about enduring in love - and out of it. The speaker explores the emptiness that surrounds us when we feel abandoned. When the person who should give you everything gives you nothing. The bittersweet feeling of finally choosing yourself.

Be kind, be welcoming. Be warm, be homely.

Build yourself brick by brick; don’t lose your focus.

Pad through your darkness at 1:23, smell like roses, lilies, lavender

Spend summer with hands covered in sand, suncream, hair in a knot.

Make him love you. Be soft, be holy.

Listen to his rude interruptions. Smile, hold his hand, be happy.

Are you happy?

Haphazard nights in sheets. Twisted in white, closeness that becomes scary

be wary. 

Of his warmth, the security. It’ll be gone before you realise

he is not worth the time and the energy and the restless nights.

Remember his number like you remember his laugh – fading into the past.

Don’t whine, don’t cry. It is what it is, what wants you will find you.

Ignore the rage that you find in yourself; that you didn’t even realise existed.

Hold the rage. Funnel it through your heart, into somewhere deeper,

where you still feel it, but the ache is dull. Find a way on. Strike the match, burn the bridge.

It won’t lead you where you need to go anymore.

You’ve lost the pure white tinge to your soul – does it feel different now?

Find the next one, repeat the cycle, strike the match, burn the bridges.

Are you happy?