love; and other disorders

IX. Heartbreak Hotline

"Hello? heartbreak hotline,
how may i help you?"

hey, it's me again.

i've been calling for the
last night and the last
four midnights.

all the receivers had
fax paper voices and created a matryoshka kind of love out of
paper cranes and dancing bears.

they asked me if i
wanted to hear a story, and
together we sailed on a
starry lake in the midst of
the fireflies,
under black tea
and the origami moonlight.

they had my heart till midnight,
and left it hanging on the
telephone line after the
conversation.

you know...the story
they told me sounded
a lot like heartbreak.

last night, they gave me a
bottle of white baby bunnies
and red rose fruit hearts from
the local pharmacy,
the label read:

"[twelve percent]---
manufactured affections
made in accordance with

[thirty-four percent]---
the love poems i wrote that
explained

[one percent]--- everything
i wanted, perhaps everything
i needed, when he wasn't there
anymore."

and halfway before
swallowing them i realized
that you can't just take love out
of cough syrup bottles. at least
not the same type of love he had.

tell me, how do you make it stop
hurting?

"I'm afraid i can't answer
that unless i know how
heartbroken you truly are."

by that do you mean
how much it hurt when i
got heartbroken or how
much it hurt when i got
my heart broken? if you
know enough, those are
two different diagnoses;
two different types of pain,
which one do you want me
to describe?

"I want you to describe
how you're doing as of
the moment. are you
taking care of yourself?"

i think i am. i sew the
wings of butterfly ghosts
and sang songs on a pear
lute under the sunshine. i
kissed the pearl-and-cotton
flowers on the grave of
"he and i" in the middle of
the vineyard of white grapes
of affection i grew. i drank
grapefruit sherry on the
marble balcony over the land
of a romantic as i watched
vines grow, and for the first
time, i thought i was happy
with who i was.

and then, i thought, maybe,
maybe, it was okay to love
with a love like this. to love
with the love i had. to love
with the love i knew.

are you familiar with how
the growing hurts more than
the healing and how the
healing hurts more than
the hurting?

hey, am i still hurting?

"I think you are. I think
it ought to hurt
sometimes."

is that alright?

"Yes, it's completely alright.