Poetry about a Broken Heart that can Make You Strong

Poetry about a Broken Heart: If you believe you are heartbroken, remember this: the pain will be gone finally. Being heartbroken is never everlasting. Express yourself with heartbroken poems on this post and calm your pain.

Here is a collection of simply broken heart poems that you can readout. You can share/send them to your friends via Text/SMS, Email, Whatsapp, Facebook, IM, or other social networking sites.

1. Things That Happened During Petsitting

(That I Remind Myself Are Not Metaphors for My Heart)

The dog refuses to eat. I keep filling her bowl
anyway: new kibble on top of old, hoping
that it will suddenly becoming tempting.

When I write, the cat watches me from a chair.
When I look at him, he purrs loudly, leans forward
so that I might touch him. I don’t.

Now the dog refuses to come out of her cage,
no matter what I say, no matter how wide I open
the door. She knows that I am not her master.

On the couch, the cat crawls on top of me
and loves me so hard, his claws draw blood.
I am so lonely, I do nothing to stop it.

There are lights in this house I want to turn on,
but I can’t find their switches. Outside, an engine
turns and turns in the night, but never catches.

By Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

2. Love Elegy in the Chinese Garden, with Koi

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

where a boy tugs at his mother’s shirt for a quarter.
To buy fish feed. And watching that boy,

as he knelt down to let the koi kiss his palms,
I missed what it was to be so dumb

as those koi. I like to think they’re pure,
that that’s why even after the boy’s palms were empty,

after he had nothing else to give, they still kissed
his hands. Because who hasn’t done that—

loved so intently even after everything
has gone? Loved something that has washed

its hands of you? I like to think I’m different now,
that I’m enlightened somehow,

but who am I kidding? I know I’m like those koi,
still, with their popping mouths, that would kiss

those hands again if given the chance. So dumb.

By Nathan McClain

3. You Thought

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

You thought I’d sing the dirge
But I couldn’t

You thought I’d cook the rabbit
And I hadn’t

You thought I’d come back that day
And I didn’t

You thought I’d tend the flowers
But I couldn’t

You thought I’d turn the lock
But I hadn’t

You thought I’d open the door
See you
But I couldn’t
You thought I’d lay down
But I couldn’t
It kills me still
I couldn’t
I couldn’t

By Dorothea Lasky

4. 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.
Under its chin, no fold of skin softened.
Behind the knees, no pad of yellow fat.
What it knew in the morning it still believed at nightfall.
An unconjured confidence lifted its eyebrows, its cheeks.

The longing has not diminished.
Still it understands. It is time to consider a cat,
the cultivation of African violets or flowering cactus.

Yes, it decides:
Many miniature cacti, in blue and red painted pots.
When it finds itself disquieted
by the pure and unfamiliar silence of its new life,
it will touch them—one, then another—
with a single finger outstretched like a tiny flame.

By Jane Hirshfield

5. 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.

By Audre Lorde

6. Dear Love,

you dream in the language of dodging bullets and artillery fire.
new, sexy diagnoses have been added to the lexicon on your behalf
(“charlie don’t surf,” has also been added to the lexicon on your behalf).

in this home that is not our home, we have mutually exiled each
other. i walk down your street in the rain, and i do not call you. i
walk in the opposite direction of where i know to find you. that we
do not speak is louder than bombs.

there are times that missing you is a matter of procedure. now is
not one of those times. there are times when missing you hurts. so
it comes to this, vying for geography. there is a prayer stuck in my
throat. douse me in gasoline, my love, and strike a match. let’s see
this prayer ignite to high heaven.

By Barbara Jane Reyes

7. Local News: Woman Dies in Chimney

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

could disregard so much: the damper, the flue,
the smoke shelf. He can’t imagine what it was she faced.

The empty garage. The locked back door. And is that
a light on in the den? They show us the grass

where they found her purse. And it’s not impossible to picture
her standing on the patio — abandoned — the mind

turning obscene, all hopes pinned on refastening the snap.
Then spotting the bricks rising above the roof

and at first believing and then knowing, sun flashing its
god-blinding light behind it, that the chimney was the way.

By Kristen Tracy

8. Love, I’m Done with You

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.

By Ross Gay

9. A Pity, We Were Such a Good Invention

They amputated
Your thighs off my hips.
As far as I’m concerned
They are all surgeons. All of them.

They dismantle us
Each from the other.
As far as I’m concerned
They are all engineers. All of them.

A pity. We were such a good
And loving invention.
An aeroplane made from a man and wife.
Wings and everything.
We hovered a little above the earth.

We even flew a little.

By Yehuda Amichai

10. The Coin of Your Country

When I take my scissors to your shirts,
I am frightened: not that they will whimper
But that they won’t understand the violence I mean.
That kind of violence is the other side of love,

Bright as a light-saber and permanent
As the angel’s swords above Eden
Barring that couple with a final X,
That violence means a love strong as death.

Once Sie ist mein leben, you said, meaning me
And I took those words personally
And knocked upon the door of my heart
Until all its birds flooded to you, in a rush—

Like the Iroquois, I tugged on our peace-pipe,
I wrote your name in smoke. Then went home
With my pockets rolling in shining glass beads,
My pockets so rich with the coin of your country.

By Monica Ferrell

11. Red Ghazal

I’ve noticed after a few sips of tea, the tip of her tongue, thin and red
with heat, quickens when she describes her cuts and bruises—deep violets and red.

The little girl I baby-sit, hair orange and wild, sits splayed and upside down
on a couch, insists her giant book of dinosaurs is the only one she’ll ever read.

The night before I left him, I could not sleep, my eyes fixed on the freckles
of his shoulder, the glow of the clock, my chest heavy with dread.

Scientists say they’ll force a rabbit to a bird, a jellyfish with a snake, even
though the pairs clearly do not mix. Some things are not meant to be bred.

I almost forgot the weight of a man sitting beside me in bed sheets crumpled
around our waists, both of us with magazines, laughing at the thing he just read.

He was so charming—pointed out planets, ghost galaxies, an ellipsis
of ants on the wall. And when he kissed me goodnight, my neck reddened.

I’m terrible at cards. Friends huddle in for Euchre, Hearts—beg me to play
with them. When it’s obvious I can clearly win with a black card, I select a red.

I throw away my half-finished letters to him in my tiny pink wastebasket, but
my aim is no good. The floor is scattered with fire hazards, declarations unread.

By Aimee Nezhukumatathil

12. Waiting for This Story to End Before I Begin Another

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.

You said let’s put our cards on the table,
Your card was your body, the table my bed,
where we didn’t get till 4 am, so tired from wanting
what we shouldn’t that when we finally found our heads,
we’d lost our minds.

Love, I wanted to call you so fast.
But so slow you could taste each
letter licked into your particular and rose-like ear.
L, love, for let’s wait. O, for oh no, let’s not. V
for the precious v between your deep breasts
(and the virtue of your fingers
in the voluptuous center of me.)

Okay, E for enough.

Dawn broke, or shattered. Once we’ve made
the promises, it’s hard to add the prefix if. . . .
But not so wrong to try.
That means taking a lot of walks,
which neither of us is good at,
for different reasons, and nights up till 2
arguing whose reasons are better.

Time and numbers count a lot in this. 13
years my marriage. 5 years you my friend.
4th of July weekend when something that begins
in mist, by mistake (whose?), means too much
has to end. I think we need an abacus to get our love
on course, and one of us to oil the shining rods
so we can keep the crazy beads clicking,
clicking.

It wasn’t a question
of a perfect fit. Theoretically,
it should be enough to say I left a man
for a woman (90% of the world is content
to leave it at that. Oh, lazy world) and when the woman
lost her nerve, I left
for greater concerns: when words like autonomy
were useful, I used them, I confess.

So I get
what I deserve: a studio apartment he paid the rent on;
bookshelves up to the ceiling she drove
the screws for. And a skylight I sleep alone
beneath, and two shiny quarters in my pocket
to call one, then the other, or to call one

twice. Once, twice, I threatened to leave him—
remember? Now that I’ve done it, he says
he doesn’t. I’m in a phonebooth at the corner of Bank
and Greenwich; not a booth, exactly,
but two sheets of glass to shiver between.

This is called being street-smart: dialing
a number that you know won’t be answered,
but the message you leave leaves proof that you tried.
And this, my two dearly beloveds, is this called
hedging your bets? I fish out my other
coin, turn it over in my fingers, press
it into the slot. Hold it there. Let it drop.

By Jan Heller Levi

13. I Don’t Miss It

But sometimes I forget where I am,
Imagine myself inside that life again.

Recalcitrant mornings. Sun perhaps,
Or more likely colorless light

Filtering its way through shapeless cloud.

And when I begin to believe I haven’t left,
The rest comes back. Our couch. My smoke

Climbing the walls while the hours fall.
Straining against the noise of traffic, music,

Anything alive, to catch your key in the door.
And that scamper of feeling in my chest,

As if the day, the night, wherever it is
I am by then, has been only a whir

Of something other than waiting.

We hear so much about what love feels like.
Right now, today, with the rain outside,

And leaves that want as much as I do to believe
In May, in seasons that come when called,

It’s impossible not to want
To walk into the next room and let you

Run your hands down the sides of my legs,
Knowing perfectly well what they know.

By Tracy K. Smith

14. The Flurry

When we talk about when to tell the kids,
We are so together, so concentrated.
I mutter, “i feel like a killer.” “i’m
The killer”—taking my wrist—he says,
Holding it. he is sitting on the couch,
The old indigo chintz around him,
Rich as a night sea with jellies,
I am sitting on the floor.

I look up at him,
As if within some chamber of matedness,
Some dust i carry around me. tonight,
To breathe its magellanic field is less
Painful, maybe because he is drinking
A wine grown where i was born—fog,
Eucalyptus, sempervirens—and i’m
Sharing the glass with him.

“don’t catch my cold,” he says, “
—oh that’s right, you want
To catch my cold.” i should not have told him that,
I tell him i will try to fall out of
Love with him, but i feel i will love him All my life.

He says he loves me
As the mother of our children, and new troupes
Of tears mount to the acrobat platforms
Of my ducts and do their burning leaps.

Some of them jump straight sideways, and, for a
Moment, i imagine a flurry
Of tears like a whirra of knives thrown
At a figure, to outline it—a heart’s spurt
Of rage. It glitters, in my vision, i nod
To it, it is my hope.

By Sharon Olds

15. You Love, You Wonder

You love a woman and you wonder where she goes all night in some tricked-
out taxicab, with her high heels and her corset and her big, fat mouth.

You love how she only wears her glasses with you, how thick
and cow-eyed she swears it’s only ever you she wants to see.

You love her, you want her very ugly. If she is lovely big, you want her
scrawny. If she is perfect lithe, you want her ballooned, a cosmonaut.

How not to love her, her bouillabaisse, her orangina. When you took her
to the doctor the doctor said, “Wow, look at that!” and you were proud,

you asshole, you love and that’s how you are in love. Any expert, observing
human bodies, can see how she’s exceptional, how she ruins us all.

But you really love this woman, how come no one can see this? Everyone must
become suddenly very clumsy at recognizing beauty if you are to keep her.

You don’t want to lose anything, at all, ever. You want her sex depilated, you
want everyone else not blind, but perhaps paralyzed, from the eyes down.

You wonder where she goes all night. If she leaves you, you will know
everything about love. If she’s leaving you now, you already know it.

By Brenda Shaughnessy

16. 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 actors

honing their craft, but even that’s a fantasy.
Mostly on TV the lions ate the hyenas

but 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.

By Courtney Queeney

Those are my best selections for heartbreak poems. Did I miss anyone? Let me know in the comments! Kindly share them with your friends on social media handles.

Daily Time Poems.