13.06.21: The Poems I Don't Want to Write

Trauma and heartbreak have long been my greatest inspirations, but enduring them takes a toll. This week I discuss the work I know is in me, and why I don't want to write those poems.

Earlier today, I published a poem on Instagram that seemed to resonate with a lot of people:

the poems
i will write
when you’re gone
will be the best of me,
but god
i want you
to stay

This piece is short, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it for the last few days. I’ve spent a long time trying to heal, trying to get back to a version of myself that wasn’t scared to take a risk.

Except, that isn’t really true.

I talk a lot about the progress I’ve made, about how I’m trying to approach healing, but if I’m going to be really honest, I’m not sure that’s what I’ve been doing.

This is a little hard to admit to myself, but what I’ve really been doing is giving myself permission to be a coward.

I spend my career writing about previous heartbreaks, previous trauma, without ever bearing my chest to anything new, anything that might be able to hurt me. I haven’t taken any real risks, with my heart or my mental health, and the truth is I’m just as scared as I’ve ever been.

And then I found her.

This isn’t a story about how I found a person who makes everything less frightening, because the truth is, she’s the scariest thing I’ve ever come across. And with that fear comes the realisation that I have to make a choice - I have to risk whatever is left of this heart one more time, or let her go.

And letting her go just isn’t an option. Not this time.

It’s not the missing her, the carving her touch from my shoulder - it’s the happiness that scares me. It’s the understanding of how easy I’ve made it for another person to hurt me.

I used to think that love was the quiet moment between pulling the pin, and the grenade opening itself. I thought of love as a pause; a moment of stillness before the inevitable embrace of shrapnel.

And maybe a part of me still thinks that. Except, she is not a grenade; she’s an atomic bomb, and everything is still so damn quiet.

The poem is a realisation that the best of me, the work I’ve always wanted to produce, is tied to losing someone like her. That to write a book I can finally be proud of, I need to go through something I cannot undo, one more time.

But I don’t think I want to write those poems, and for the first time in the last several years, I’m willing to take a risk. For the first time I won’t allow myself to be a coward, even in the moments when all I want to do is run.

Yours,

Blake

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You can now pre-order Murmuration from retailers worldwide, including Barnes and Noble, Amazon (US), Amazon (UK) and Waterstones. You can view a full list of retailers here, along with instructions on how to get my new pre-order bonus TEN for free. You can also still grab all three of my existing books at blakeauden.com.