When the heart is slit open
Love drips like blood
Thick warm drops or red
Trickle down the chest and it’s painful.

It’s as if the air around you turns dense and heavy
Too heavy to carry, It starts to bend you, exhaust you,
But it’s not all in the air, you feel it in your body
There is a vacuum in your gut, in your chest
Trying to swallow you inside out,
It hurts physically, at the back of your eyes
In your throat, in your chest
And somewhere else
Somewhere inside you 
Or maybe outside you 
But the pain is so real
Yet you can’t point to a part of your body
And say “There, that’s where it hurts.“

The tragedy of it all is
That to the world you look alright,
They have all been through it
Yet they won’t truly understand it
Humans can’t remember pain
We remember what happened,
The injury, the screams, the hospital
Yet we can’t really remember the sensation of pain
It’s a good thing I suppose, but in this case
As the pain crushes your spirits inside
They expect you to stay strong and smile
So you smile.

You hurt and you break and you die
And you Smile.

-N

 

Photographer Unknown
Poetry © Copyright 2017, Niharika Jaiswal