After the Heartbreak

Unfixed poem

It was summer, so of course the thrushes
were going berserk in the trees, singing
every song that came to them about
how astounding it is to be alive, to be breathing.
I was in the house, alone, my sobs echoing
through the empty rooms. The envelope
was sealed, the fire snubbed, the door
shut and locked. The end had come
and the world felt raw and harsh, like wind
on the inflamed skin that remains after
a sunburn is peeled away. Don't 
touch me, I said to the wind, and to
the insistent waves of sun. It's okay,
I told my cowering little should. It's okay.
Take what time you need. Retreat
to the downstairs room, draw the shades. 
Some things, like just-planted seeds, 
need isolation and dark. But I won't say
that something was planted. No, 
instead, something was torn away—
many branches sliced from the trunk
of an old tree. And yet, something did, 
eventually, emergency. What was it? All
I can tell you is that I'm here, writing
this—aren't I? And what would have happened
without the small tenderness I gave
to that wrecked thing I was? Don't the leaves
bloom anyway, on those branches
that are left? Don't they make themselves—
just by being alive, just be breathing—
beautiful again?

-Tyler Mortensen-Hayes