No matter if you've been dating for years or a few weeks, breaking up can make you feel like the world is crashing down around you. But I'm here to tell you that there's one thing that just might get you through a breakup: poems.
As long as there have been love poems, there have been breakup poems. After all, love is freaking hard, and when you do everything right, it can still fall apart. But one of the incredible things about poetry is that it can take those feelings that seem inexpressible and lay them out on the page. When you read a poem that really gets to the core of what you're feeling, you'll get a little bit of much-needed release.
Of course, breakups are defined by cliches: "It's not you, it's me." "Let's just be friends." "There will be other fish in the sea." And while it's true that cliches can be comforting, I wanted to find you some poems that you haven't read a million times before. Who knows, maybe the silver lining of this breakup will be that you discover a new favorite poet.
So, if you're going through a breakup, here are some poems that are perfect for you right now. They capture all the pain of heartbreak, and give you something beautiful to soak in as you process everything that just happened:
1
"Our Many Never Endings" by Courtney Queeney
"Inside my chest, a mangle.Inside yours, a deflating balloon.You took the vacuum cleaner, the ironing board, the dish rackand left me some lint, an iron to scorch shirts, one chipped plate."2
"Things That Happened During Petsitting That I Remind Myself Are Not Metaphors for My Heart" by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz
"On the couch, the cat crawls on top of meand loves me so hard, his claws draw blood.I am so lonely, I do nothing to stop it."3
"Love Elegy in the Chinese Garden, with Koi" by Nathan McClain
"Because who hasn’t done that—loved so intently even after everythinghas gone? Loved something that has washedits hands of you?"4
"You thought" by Dorothea Lasky
"You thought I’d flipped the switch and I hadn’tYou thought I’d left the window openAnd I wouldn’tYou thought I’d turn the dial upBut I didn’t"5
"This Was Once a Love Poem" by Jane Hirshfield
"This was once a love poem, before its haunches thickened, its breath grew short, before it found itself sitting, perplexed and a little embarrassed, on the fender of a parked car, while many people passed by without turning their heads."6
"Movement Song" by Audre Lorde
"your goodbye is a promise of lightning in the last angels handunwelcome and warningthe sands have run out against us we were rewarded by journeysaway from each otherinto desireinto mornings alone"7
"dear love," by Barbara Jane Reyes
"there are times when missing you hurts. soit comes to this, vying for geography. there is a prayer stuck in mythroat. douse me in gasoline, my love, and strike a match. let’s seethis prayer ignite to high heaven."8
"Local News: Woman Dies in Chimney" by Kristen Tracy
"One neighbor speaks directly into the microphone, asks how a personcould disregard so much: the damper, the flue, the smoke shelf. He can’t imagine what it was she faced."9
"Love, I'm Done With You" by Rose Gay
"Love, it used to beyou could retire your toothbrush for like two or three days and stillI’d push my downy face into your neck. Used to beI hung on your every word. (Sing! you’d say: and I was a bird.Freedom! you’d say: and I never really knew what that meant,but liked the way it rang like a rusty bell.) Used to be."10
"A Pity, We Were Such a Good Invention" by Yehuda Amichai, translated by Assia Gutmann
"They amputatedYour thighs off my hips.As far as I'm concernedThey are all surgeons. All of them."11
"The Coin of Your Country" by Monica Ferrell
"When I take my scissors to your shirts,I am frightened: not that they will whimperBut that they won’t understand the violence I mean.That kind of violence is the other side of love,"12
"You Are the Penultimate Love of My Life" by Rebecca Hazelton
"The garden you plant and I plant is tunneled through by voles, the vowelswe speak aren’t vows,"13
"Red Ghazal" by Aimee Nezhukumathil
"I throw away my half-finished letters to him in my tiny pink wastebasket, butmy aim is no good. The floor is scattered with fire hazards, declarations unread."14
"Waiting for This Story to End Before I Begin Another" by Jan Heller Levi
"All my stories are about being left,all yours about leaving. So we should have known.Should have known to leave well enough alone;we knew, and we didn’t."15
"I Don't Miss It" by Tracy K. Smith
"But sometimes I forget where I am,Imagine myself inside that life again.Recalcitrant mornings. Sun perhaps,Or more likely colorless light"16
"The Flurry" by Sharon Olds
"new troupesof tears mount to the acrobat platformsof my ducts and do their burning leaps.Some of them jump straight sideways, and, for amoment, I imagine a flurryof tears like a whirra of knives thrownat a figure, to outline it—a heart’s spurt of rage. It glitters, in my vision, I nodto it, it is my hope."17
"You Love, You Wonder" by Brenda Shaughnessy
"You wonder where she goes all night. If she leaves you, you will knoweverything about love. If she’s leaving you now, you already know it."18
"Hyacinth" by Louise Glück
"And from the blood of the wounda flower sprang, lilylike, more brilliantthan the purples of Tyre."19
"Mine Is the First Rodeo, Mine Is the Last Accolade" by Jaswinder Bolina
"I’m grateful to the man now sleeping with my ex-lover.It’s true I loved her, but it’s right that someone be with her nowin the dark hour of our republic. Life is no good anymore."20
"Conjugal Elegy" by Valerie Wetlaufer
"You held my hand. We listened to the Callas arias on our porch. You kept rewinding the love song back to the beginning to the place where she saings, Certainly not today."21
"stop bath" by Kirby Knowlton
"they say that everyseven years your body replaces eachcell it has ever known.soon i will be new again."Get Even More From Bustle — Sign Up For The Newsletter
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