20 Touching Poems That Can Get You Through A Breakup
20 Touching Poems That Can Get You Through A Breakup.
Poems On Break Up: Break up are one of the most heart wrecking moments of an individual’s life. It is often accompanied by a feeling of worthlessness, rejection, and neglect. It is not unusual for someone going through heartbreak to feel violated and unworthy of affection.
This moment in life needs the significant presence of someone emotionally matured to take you through the process. Poems on break up help to comfort us by emphasizing that we aren’t alone in the feeling of neglect and frustration.
1. Love, We’re Through
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
I’d push my downy face into your neck. Used to be
I 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. But now
I can tell you your breath stinks and you’re full of shit.
You have more lies about yourself than bodies
beneath your bed. Rooting
for the underdog. Team player. Hook,
line and sinker. Love, you helped design the brick
that built the walls around the castle
in the basement of which is a vault
inside of which is another vault
inside of which…you get my point. Your tongue
is made of honey but flicks like a snake’s. Voice
like a bird but everyone’s ears are bleeding.
From the inside your house shines
and shines, but from outside you can see
it’s built from bones. From out here it looks
like a graveyard, and the garden’s
all ash. And besides,
your breath stinks. We’re through.
– Ross Gay
2. I Don’t Sleep Because Of You
I don’t go to sleep at night
because you haunt my dreams,
and waking up to find you’re not here
is harder than it seems.
See, I’d rather stay awake at night
because one thing I know is true,
that without my dreams of us,
I’ll never be with you.
So I don’t close my eyes at night,
and I don’t go to sleep,
because if I do,
I’d have to admit defeat.
So why don’t you try living
where you can’t face your dreams,
where every minute gets harder?
well, that’s the way it feels,
and it’s not that I can’t sleep,
because that I can do,
but if I close my eyes at night
then I am with you,
and you may think that’s what I want.
And to point you would be true,
but the reason I don’t sleep at night
is all down to you.
I’d happily dream about you all day long
Because in my dreams you care.
It’s the waking up without you
That I cannot bear.
– Carlie
3. What’s Next?
I lie awake tonight,
Wishing of things I can change.
I try to convince myself,
But it’s all so strange.Is it me,
Or is it you?
Do I try,
Or are we through?So long we’ve shared
Just to walk away.
But so much hurt
To want to stay.Why do we do this,
Try to hurt the other more,
Only to watch one
Walk right out the door?I love you so much,
Yet I push you to the point of breaking,
But why do you play with my heart
And never stop taking?Is this the end
Or a new beginning?
Only one can guide me
When my head is spinning.Don’t push,
Don’t try,
Don’t stress,
Don’t cry.That is what plays
Over in my head
As I try to close my eyes
And just go to bed.
– Amanda
4. My One-Sided Love
My love to her is a roaring fire.
She’s all I ever did or will desire.
Without her I am no more,
‘Cause she’s all I live for.She’s my red colored rose,
Yet I don’t know why her I chose.
Guess that’s the way the heart is,
That way of working is only his.I hide behind a “hey” or a “hi,”
But the truth is that I’m just too shy.
The truth is that I’m just too scared
Of her reaction if she knew I cared.Every day my feelings I fight,
Try to change them, make them right,
But they already long ago are,
They already went too far.Sometimes I feel like a creep.
I feel I’m on a mountain that’s too steep.
Sometimes at night I can’t even sleep
Because of what’s hidden down deep.
– Hussein A. Termos
5. Missing Him
Day by day,
Miles apart,
I hold him close
In my heart.
My heart likes him here,
But my mind wants him to disappear.
So confused but so in love,
Looking at the stars above,
Remembering what we had,
And what could have been,
When we were in love,
And how we were friends.
He was like family to me,
I trusted him with all my heart,
But in a million pieces
He shattered it apart.
I only asked for one more chance,
Just to get it right,
But he turned me away,
And bid me good night.
Now these tears are here to stay,
Streaming down my face,
Wondering why he would turn me away,
And now we don’t talk anymore.
That’s so true,
So why am I still in love with you?
– Chantel Johnson
6. Hoping
I write this poem for you to read,
with heartache that will forever bleed.
I wish things were so different.
Sadly, this is what you’ve made of me.
I sit here alone day by day,
realizing my life is better off this way.
I admit I still hurt from all your lies,
yet you’ll never hear my cries.
You once made my world stand tall and proud.
Now what’s left has crumbled down.
Something good has come of this,
One more chance to find true happiness.
I guess this is goodbye, and so it shall be,
wishing for your love was foolish of me.
I will move on, which was too easy for you.
I wrote this poem hoping you’d feel heartache too.
– Tara Ong
7. Heavy
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,
as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,
was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel,
(brave even among lions),
“It’s not the weight you carry
but how you carry it –
books, bricks, grief –
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it
when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?
Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?
How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe
also troubled –
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?
– Mary Oliver
8. The Fist
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
past love to mania. This has the strong
clench of the madman, this is
gripping the ledge of unreason, before
plunging howling into the abyss.
Hold hard then, heart. This way at least you live.
– Derek Walcott
9. Sonnet 139
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.
Tell me thou lov’st elsewhere; but in my sight,
Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside;
What need’st thou wound with cunning when thy might
Is more than my o’erpressed defense can bide?
Let me excuse thee: ah, my love well knows
Her pretty looks have been mine enemies;
And therefore from my face she turns my foes,
That they elsewhere might dart their injuries—
Yet do not so; but since I am near slain,
Kill me outright with looks and rid my pain.
– William Shakespeare
10. Never Give All the Heart
Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
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.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.
– W. B. Yeats
11. Proud Of My Broken Heart
Proud of my broken heart, since thou didst break it,
Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee,Proud of my night, since thou with moons dost slake it,
Not to partake thy passion, my humility.Thou can’st not boast, like Jesus, drunken without companion
Was the strong cup of anguish brewed for the NazareneThou can’st not pierce tradition with the peerless puncture,
See! I usurped thy crucifix to honor mine!
– Emily Dickenson
12. Mad Girl’s Love Song
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.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
– Sylvia Plath
14. This Was Once a Love Poem
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.
It remembers itself dressing as if for a great engagement.
It remembers choosing these shoes,
this scarf or tie.
Once, it drank beer for breakfast,
drifted its feet
in a river side by side with the feet of another.
Once it pretended shyness, then grew truly shy,
dropping its head so the hair would fall forward,
so the eyes would not be seen.
It spoke with passion of history, of art.
It was lovely then, this poem.
– Jane Hirschfeld
15. You Fit Into Me
You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye.
– Margaret Atwood
16. A Winter’s Tale
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.
I cannot see her, since the mist’s white scarf
Obscures the dark wood and the dull orange sky;
But she’s waiting, I know, impatient and cold, half
Sobs struggling into her frosty sigh.
Why does she come so promptly, when she must know
That she’s only the nearer to the inevitable farewell;
The hill is steep, on the snow my steps are slow –
Why does she come, when she knows what I have to tell?
– D.H. Lawrence
17. Movement Song
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.
Do not remember me as a bridge nor a roof
as the maker of legends
nor as a trap
door to that world
where black and white clericals
hang on the edge of beauty in five oclock elevators
twitching their shoulders to avoid other flesh
and now
there is someone to speak for them
moving away from me into tomorrows
morning of wish and ripen
your goodbye is a promise of lightning
in the last angels hand
unwelcome and warning
the sands have run out against us
we were rewarded by journeys
away from each other
into desire
into mornings alone
where excuse and endurance mingle
conceiving decision.
Do not remember me
as disaster
nor as the keeper of secrets
I am a fellow rider in the cattle cars
watching
you move slowly out of my bed
saying we cannot waste time
only ourselves.
– Audre Lord
18. Our Many Never Endings
You entered the bedroom and fell to your knees.
I wait the rest of my life to hear you say, I made a mistake.Inside my chest, a mangle.
Inside yours, a deflating balloon.You took the vacuum cleaner, the ironing board, the dish rack
and left me some lint, an iron to scorch shirts, one chipped plate.I would like to say at least we perfected
entrances and exits, like professional stage actorshoning their craft, but even that’s a fantasy.
Mostly on TV the lions ate the hyenasbut sometimes the hyenas
formed a posse, and tore a lion up.Occasionally you came in out of the rain
and I was glad to have you.
– Courtney Queeney
19. Unto a broken heart
Unto a broken heart
No other one may go
Without the high prerogative
Itself hath suffered too.
– Emily Dickinson
20. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
Read the full poem here.
“I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair” by Pablo Neruda
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.“I Loved You…” by Aleksander Pushkin
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.
– T.S. Elliot
These poems on break up were specially selected to help anyone going through break up understand that they still have a lot of productive and more supportive relationships ahead to explore. It is important to share these poems with your friends going through sad and depressing satiations.
Daily Time Poems.