Not Much Further
Waking is the hard part.
The bed still warm on your side.
The long walk to the end of the day,
without you by my side.
and the harder part,
lying down in the dark,
and learning to fall asleep alone.
That is how a heart breaks.
Not all at once.
A little every morning,
every night.
But here is what no one warns you about:
after a while, the pain goes quiet.
Not gone. Quiet.
And you can rest inside it,
the way you’d rest in cold water,
once you stop fighting the cold.
I don’t have much further to go.
The bottom is close.
It’s very calm down there.
Nothing reaches it.
Not you, not anyone.
Nothing has to be felt.
I tell myself,
we don’t have to feel again.