—Liked what you read? Grab a book.
When the broken glass of life
Scrapes dead weight from parts of you
You still treasure, gathering the slivers
Is a short path to hypersensitivity
As opposed to applauding the poetry
Of how long you’ve had your head down
Letting the unfairness nestle
Into the corners of your smile
And bloom into the tender sweetness of a heart
Whose open arms proved insufficient
The music in your hips newly sprung by bae’s absence
Her face in every woman’s face regardless of age
Stop trying to stop seeing her everywhere
Stop beating yourself up for finding yourself asking
What do you mean what do I mean by love?
Years into thinking the answer was set in stone
Just steep in it and get familiar with how you are
Too much food to finish for basically everyone
Until someone comes along happy to wrap you up
And save you for delectable exploratory unravelling
Which, for the record, is the opposite of cutting back
To compromise on the tenant between your eyes
—Liked what you read? Grab a book.
It’s common sense writerly wisdom that one’s best work comes from the darkest places. It’s easier to believe in, of course, when everything is fine. When life sticks its foot out and makes you fall on your face, good literature or whichever artistic pursuits get you going don’t seem that important.
So when the love of my life walked out on the world we’d built over the last five years, unannounced, as these things happen, having decided on her own that our ways of being in the world were too different to stay, I was well aware as the darkness crept in and I started to lose my bearings.
Beyond doing everything I could to keep depression and anxiety at bay—reaching out to friends and loved ones, meditating, reading, sleeping and eating well, rediscovering self-worth and self-love as a newly single person—there was still an excess of grief in my chest, enough to not want to accept that an open mind, a shared home, a half decade of shared experiences, a whole lotta love, and an undying willingness to work things out are not enough to salvage things with someone who found a way to be happier and decided they were no longer willing to meet you halfway.
As the days crawled on, and I learned the feelings wouldn’t so much leave as evolve into something bearable, I stopped beating myself up and ugly crying enough to assemble into my office chair to see what words came out.
The Breakup Suite is a breakup album in book of poetry form.
It’s poetry for the dumped, or anyone drawn to that wallowing headspace.
It’s also my best effort at letting my former partner go, and unlearning the plans I had to never leave, by channeling leftover sweetness and unwanted nastiness into art that does justice to our time together.
I share it because my deal is creating things, putting them out into the world, and hoping they make at least one person who isn’t me feel less alone. Beyond that, I have no other expectations.
Available now in Print, PDF, and Kindle.
Read some sample poems here, here, and here.
Your copy is complimentary if you’re committed to reviewing the book for your website or any other publication. Use my contact form to let me know if you’re interested.
From the introduction,
“There is only one way to describe this tiny but mighty book of poems: the messy reassembling of a broken heart. If you’re reeling from grief after losing your beloved, and are looking for a little help unleashing pent up emotions, this one’s for you.
Does that mean the poems are merely weepy therapy and free of artistic merit? That’s not for me to decide. All I know is that the vast majority of these lines are about a psyche-crushing breakup, the painfully sudden occurrence and aftermath of which I am better able to live with simply because I have written it all down. My hope is that this reaction from extreme distress to moving on without being haunted by a partner’s memory is somehow transferrable through the poems here contained.
Listen, I know this might sound overly sentimental to anyone who isn’t currently consumed by post-separation emptiness, which is why I’m happy to say that this book isn’t for you. And I hope the time never comes when you need it to help you let the ugly feelings out and let a partner go. What follows is the saddest, angriest, achiest, all-up-in-my-feelingsest set of poems I have ever put together, every one of them dedicated to the romantic who mistook someone for their person only to watch that person leave all of a sudden after years without a chance for negotiation having come to the decision slowly and deliberately on their own weeks or months ago.”
I asked you for regular alone time after our time
My anxiety needed it to properly relax after work
I didn’t have the foresight to factor in how that meant
We’d have less nights to lose track of time together
I was thinking about what I needed to feel rested
I wasn’t worried about you no longer making room for my loner self
About each of us winding down the night alone
Birthing a little emptiness in you, slowly spreading
I mistook you not mentioning it for contentment
You may have wanted me to seek you out more on my own
I’m sorry we weren’t more careful about solitude and socializing
Our opposing energy sources
How I’d ask you more if I could make you happier
If I had the chance
Which would have probably led us to break up sooner
Knowing I can’t rewire myself to share you and be happy
It would have been for the best
Be ready to let them go.
While you’re OK with them being your whole world, their happiness is based on exploration.
Remember, they’ll be at their most defensive when they feel trapped while you’re too blissed out on having nailed down a commitment for forever to notice that you’re likely to confuse it with a guarantee and rarely revisit to refortify.
Pay attention to that feeling of dread you get about having to be social for an extended period of time. Now think about them feeling your absence each time you’re not at an outing exploring with them. Internalize the compromise implied here. To stay together, you will have to be uncomfortable for them a lot of the time.
You will have to be that dashing romantic Casanova person more often than you think you need to. Giving each other space is all well and good, but you need to let your person know what they mean to you in more spontaneous ways.
Palm the small of their back and gently pull them into you when you get home, even though your slushy boots are messing up the foyer floor.
Touch and profess without formality, breath in their ear, peck on the neck. Let them feel you instead of merely knowing you are there. Make unexpected plans,
But don’t neglect the need for a backup, a support network that is wide enough for them not to fall into the illusion that they’re almost exclusively responsible for your sanity.
Regularly imagine ways your lives can truly resemble interlaced fingers knowing they get their energy from other people while you get yours from being alone.
Trevor Abes: Writer 