This poem’s a Love Song. It’s for you. Why are we here? It sure as hell isn’t to prove worth
or accumulate stuff. And all the other things we do to ward off pain and death? Exercises in futility.
Do you have to love or feel? Nope. But I’d rather embrace life’s heartaches than live a half-life, starved
or the one thing that makes us rich beyond measure. Avec amour, always. XO

(You are here to) risk your heart

Life will break you. Nobody

can protect you from that, and living

alone won’t either, for solitude

will also break you

with its yearning.

You have to love.

You have to feel.

It is the reason you are here

on earth. You are here

to risk your heart. You are here

to be swallowed up.

And when it happens

that you are broken, or betrayed,

or left, or hurt, or death

brushes near, let yourself

sit by an apple tree and listen

to the apples falling all around you

in heaps, wasting their sweetness.

Tell yourself that you tasted

as many as you could.

 

Found poem by Krayna Castelbaum; inspired by poet and novelist Louise Erdrich’s novel, The Painted Drum.
Created with line breaks only; no words were added or deleted.

Image credit. Photo taken by moi.

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