The Art of Loving and Losing

Is this what it feels like to heal?

Is this what it feels like to heal?
When sad songs aren't addictive drugs
That force tears to stream silently down my face
When seeking comfort while sacrificing composure
But instead cause me to reminisce of those times
When in the hungry claws of vicious depression
I was tightly clasped like a tremulous mouse
Caught in the trap of unforgiving hopelessness
The endless headaches and sleepless nights
I prayed for the strength to keep marching
Because I forlornly believed in no escape
Only in persisting within the sadness
Until magically one day I wasn't
Someday that wasn't today or any day soon
I remember it all when listening to these songs
But the dread has dissipated into remembering

Is this what it feels like to heal?
When in dreams you surprise me
Your ghost appearing uninvited in the bliss
Of a new blossoming life without you in it
You're an awkward puzzle piece out of place
Unfitting in the crowd of familiar faces
That never knew you and never will
We say nothing meaningful to each other
All we know is the language of civility
But wide eyes and frozen bodies say more
Than the words we're too afraid to speak
No one yields but the silence slices my heart
There is only one question in my mind
The unearthed truth whispers and begs my name
In the waking hours I know I will never know
I have surrendered to the mystery of the unknown
The image of you, an irksome poltergeist
Can no longer pester my consciousness

Is this what it feels like to heal?
When I no longer feel the need to wear black
For your memory and the life we shared
I melancholically grieved you like the dead
Except the dead I've grieved in my life before
Have never left by their own volition
Your departure was sudden and unforgiving
Like the dying unable to say their farewells
You ripped yourself out from my existence
As if the eight years of our relationship
Visionaries sharing elusive hopes of the future
Meticulously planning our getaway from
The confines of the harrows of the city where we met
Exchanging secrets only meant for each other
Was all less than transient - it was meaningless
I can understand death but not your betrayal
You claimed you could read my mind like a book
But in your vainness you forgot I'm no psychic
So I had to become my own psychologist
To learn not to merely mercilessly blame myself

Is this what it feels like to heal?
When I can't contain the itch to continue writing Endless poems about unsettled heartbreak
To allow emotions to carve themselves on the page
Instead of pressurizing inwards, slowly brewing
Until they are ready to explode like hot lava
From a previously dormant and quiet volcano
Always keeping its contents boiling within
You might have closed the chapter with finality
But I took my pen and graciously opened a new book
To tell the stories that are eagerly bursting to be told
Swirling in my imagination, waiting to be untangled
On the pages I carefully scribe the unsolved enigma
Not to decipher it, but to use it as the new key
To avoid repeating the mistakes of my naive past
These are my tales to be told and passed on
Resonating throughout time with the anonymous
Transcending my own being until all there is left
Are the finalized works eventually reaching
The hands of analytic and particular scholars
That one day will divest each stanza to discover
The unsung meaning behind our ages old legend