Longing is a heartbreak:
A vapid air inside one’s chest
The cavity achill
Beneath the bleak and bony cage
Frost nibbles at the heart
Longing is a heartbreak,
Not of the love that’s lost
But of the love that’s grown and grown
And grown the wrong way—down
No memories or kisses to feed its feeble sprouts,
The tree of longing burrows
It twists and knots itself;
Without a love to match it, steal it, reveal it,
It pulses in the dark
Longing is not heartbreak;
It’s love without a love
Loss before there’s loss
Barren branches boundless as the sea
Not a breaking, but an aching
A cancer, not a crack.
