25+ Poems About Breaking Up, Grief, and Heartbreak for Readers Who Aren’t Excited About Valentine’s Day
When a relationship ends, it may seem as though your life is over, and it has a profound impact on the lives of everyone involved. Poetry about a break up is probably going to be filled with a lot of sorrow, rage, and grief.
Any relationship will experience heartbreak, and everyone handles them differently. Poetry about heartbreak might give you courage in such circumstances.
1. “After Love” By Sara Teasdale
Excerpt:
There is no magic any more,
We meet as other people do,
You work no miracle for me
Nor I for you.
2. “Oxymoronic Love” By Jennifer Militello
Excerpt:
Hatred is the new love. Rage is right. Touch
is touch. The collars of the coat turned down,
point up. The corners of our hearts are smoothed
with rough. Our glass breaks slick, our teeth
rip soft. The mollusk of me, shell-less.
3. “I Loved You…” By Aleksander Pushkin
Excerpt:
I loved you: and, it may be, from my soul
The former love has never gone away,
But let it not recall to you my dole;
I wish not sadden you in any way.
I loved you silently, without hope, fully,
In diffidence, in jealousy, in pain;
I loved you so tenderly and truly,
As let you else be loved by any man.
4. “My Honest Poem” By Rudy Francisco
5. “The Break Up Poem” By Rage Almighty
6. “The Fist” By Derek Walcott
Excerpt:
This fist clenched round my heart
loosens a little, and I gasp
brightness, but it tightens
again. When have I ever not loved
the pain of love? But this has moved
7. “Stay With Me” By Bianca Phipps
8. “Heavy” By Mary Oliver
Excerpt:
That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying
I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had his hand in this,
9. “A Poem From The Princess Saves Herself In This One” By Amanda Lovelace
10. “What Lips my Lips Have Kissed, and where, and why” By Edna St. Vincent Millay
Excerpt:
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
11. “Mad Girl’s Love Song” By Sylvia Plath
Excerpt:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
12. “Sonnet 139” By William Shakespeare
Excerpt:
O, call not me to justify the wrong
That thy unkindness lays upon my heart;
Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue;
Use power with power, and slay me not by art.
13. “Prism” By Andrea Gibson
14. “Never Give All the Heart” By W.B. Yeats
Excerpt:
Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women, if it seems
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that’s lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
15. “Movement Song” By Audre Lorde
Excerpt:
I have studied the tight curls on the back of your neck
moving away from me
beyond anger or failure
your face in the evening schools of longing
through mornings of wish and ripen
we were always saying goodbye
in the blood in the bone over coffee
before dashing for elevators going
in opposite directions
without goodbyes.
16. “For Women Who Are Difficult To Love” By Warsan Shire
17. “Local News: Woman Dies In Chimney” By Kristin Tracy
Excerpt:
They broke up and she, either fed up or drunk or undone,
ached to get back inside. Officials surmise
she climbed a ladder to his roof, removed
the chimney cap and entered feet first. Long story short,
she died there. Stuck. Like a tragic Santa. Struggling
for days, the news explains. It was a smell that led
to the discovery of her body. One neighbor
speaks directly into the microphone, asks how a person
18. “The Breakup” By Kyla Jenee Lacey
19. “Poem From Pillow Thoughts” By Courtney Peppernell
20. “This Was Once A Love Poem” By Jane Hirshfield
Excerpt:
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.
21. “Disappearing Love” By Gary R. Hess
Excerpt:
What happened to our love?
It used to be so bright
Loving, laughing, caring
Then soon caught the night
You were my one and only love
Cared for you too much
Then something happened
And slept with that man
22. “Are All the Breakups in your Poems Real?” By Aimee Nezhukumatathil.
Excerpt:
If by real you mean as real as a shark tooth stuck
in your heel, the wetness of a finished lollipop stick,
the surprise of a thumbtack in your purse—
then Yes, every last page is true, every nuance,
bit, and bite. Wait. I have made them up—all of them—
and when I say I am married, it means I married
all of them, a whole neighborhood of past loves.
23. “You Fit Into Me” By Margaret Atwood
Excerpt:
You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye
24. “You Thought” By Dorothea Lasky
Excerpt:
You thought I’d flipped the switch and I hadn’t
You thought I’d left the window open
And I wouldn’t
You thought I’d turn the dial up
But I didn’t
You thought I’d ring the sun the super
But I shouldn’t
You thought I’d unlock the beehive
But I wouldn’t
25. “A Winter’s Tale” By D.H. Lawrence
Excerpt:
Yesterday the fields were only grey with scattered snow,
And now the longest grass leaves hardly emerge;
Yet her deep footsteps mark the snow and go
On towards the pines at the hills’ white verge.
26. “Love Elegy In The Chinese Garden, With Koi” By Nathan Mcclain
Excerpt:
Near the entrance, a patch of tall grass.
Near the tall grass, long-stemmed plants;
each bending an ear-shaped cone
to the pond’s surface. If you looked closely,
you could make out silvery koi
swishing toward the clouded pond’s edge
27. “I Wanted To Make Myself Like The Ravine” By Hannah Gamble
Excerpt:
I wanted to make myself like the ravine
so that all good things
would flow into me.
Because the ravine is lowly,
it receives an abundance.
28. “Love I’m Done With You” By Ross Gay
Excerpt:
You ever wake up with your footie PJs warming
your neck like a noose? Ever upchuck
after a home-cooked meal? Or notice
how the blood on the bottoms of your feet
just won’t seem to go away? Love, it used to be
you could retire your toothbrush for like two or three days and still
29. “Heavy” By Mary Oliver
Excerpt:
That time I thought I could not go
any closer to grief without dying
I went closer, and I did not die.
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