This Breakup Poem Holds No Regret (requested poem about ending toxic relationships)

A spoken word poem written for a friend who asked me to write about getting out of a toxic relationship.

Things Solitude Can Reteach the Forgotten Warriors 

One. The first breath without him will feel like choking on sawdust. Remember that it is just your lungs expanding to a capacity he once said you did not deserve. Your limbs will be knives of pain like they have been asleep for years. They have been, ever since you started curling up in the cramped corners between his fits of rage and painting the word love over the warning signs. Learning how to stop shrinking is exhausting. Breathe. Repaint the walls. 

Two. There will be months where you will still hear his poison in the love songs on the radio. Sing along anyway. Serenade yourself, you are your own lost true love. Write poetry to the reflection in the mirror with the nails bitten down to stubs and the dark circles that remind you how bodies never master the subtle concealment of pain that you have so carefully learned. 

Three. Burn each token of himself he ever wrote you. Each goodbye-I’ll-be-back-late note. Each old grocery list. Burn the calendar, with his handwriting sticking out like unwelcome cobwebs. Most importantly of all, torch the love songs. Throw a match on to the pile of promises he never kept. Pour kerosine on the all the lies he wrote into prose. Keep the first and the last letter somewhere safe so you will never forget. Write a hundred breakup poems and shred them. Scatter them to the wind so your bitterness will one day reach an ocean and miles away you will taste freedom in the morning air.

Four. Remember how not to leave apologies for your existence behind you like a trail of footprints. Do not be scared to lie on the side of the bed he always claimed. His silhouette will not devour you in your sleep. Buy new sheets just in case. Sleep sideways, arms and legs sprawled out all in four directions as a triumphant f**k-you to the day he told you you took up too much space. Listen to the songs he couldn’t stand. Do not turn the volume down. Unlock your voice box and scream the all the pent up things he kept stuffed inside your lungs. You have not drowned. 

Five. Do not slip the key under the doormat for him. You will fight the urge to do so as you tiptoe down your hallway at four in the morning, an empty bottle of something bitter swinging in your loose fingers. He is not coming back. He does not have any of your puzzle pieces, they are all there, hiding in your pockets. Search for them. Put yourself back together the way only you know how. In the morning your stomach will overturn and bloody lies about your laugh and your thighs and your intelligence will stain the inside of your toilet harsh colors. You are not dying. Your body is telling you he never had a home underneath your skin.

Six. When you finally remove all the shrapnel from in between your ribs, do not mail the pieces to him with apologies and what-if-we-hads. Bury them in the frozen ground. In the spring you will grow a flower garden. Some of the flowers remind you of his eyes. Do not rip them from the ground. It is not their fault. Eventually you will stop seeing daggers hidden in soft things. 

Seven. Stop treating your body like a graveyard. Nothing has died within you. Do the laundry. Brush your teeth. Buy new clothes. Treat yourself with the care of a newborn child. You have just emerged from the dark. You are not the one who planted land mines where trust should have been sewn. Do not wait for the old seeds of panic to die. Plant new seeds of hope in their place. Replace the decaying stones of the past with a fresh foundation, and let the grass grow. You are as strong as the earth on which you stand. Grow new roots and do not fear the rain.