ThrowBack Poetry: My most heartfelt breakup poem ever

I remember exactly the moment when I wrote this poem (which I published on my old blog some years ago), though not exactly the date. I was standing in my kitchen drinking a glass of water. Suddenly, I felt a big pang. I looked at the blender nearby. I thought of my heart spinning in that blender (gross, I know). That was precisely the feeling I had inside my chest – chewed, crushed, although the pain had become more sore than unbearable. It had been going on for a while, this yo-yo. Break up and get back together. I knew the drill all too well. Start healing just to get a short-lived rush and then crumble again, having to start from scratch. I was so tired, but I couldn’t stop.  I tried to capture that cycle in the poem, with the heart as protagonist. Now, with all that behind me, I know better than to even get back into the blender a first time.

This poem stayed with me, even runs through my head still, sometimes…

A heart’s trajectory, by Ana Ribeiro

My heart is pulp,
gone through your blender,
it pours into my stomach,
surges back up,
into my throat,
suffocates me until
I can’t help but
let it out through my eyes.

My heart is liquid,
it rolls down my face,
stains my clothes,
finds its way to the drain

and escapes
through the streets,
runs into
our favorite bar
and drowns itself inside

a beer bottle,
you drink it
and after a few hours,
it’s squirted out of your system.

My heart swims in sewage,
it makes its way into
a treatment plant,
it’s cleaned up and discharged
into the river,
a water plant picks it up
and recycles it into something
I can drink without getting
too sick.

My heart comes through
my faucet,
into my glass
and into my mouth,
it goes back down my throat
and into my chest…
until we meet again.