Tesserae, plural of a tessera. Tessera, one of the small squares of stone or glass used in making mosaic patterns. This was originally written in 2012 and can be found on this blog as Soulbreak.
You said it felt like your soul was breaking.
Something shattered, never to be whole again.
All the goodness gone, leaving you empty
for eternity.
I wonder what soulbreak feels like.
Heartbreak is one helluva thing,
it can rip that heart straight out of
your chest, leaving you bleeding and
gasping for air, just a pile of
skin and bones all splayed out in the
open for carrion to pick.
But heartbreak is not soulbreak.
I never want to feel it,
but I wonder what it’s like.
I’ve never lost someone I could
not quit. I kicked smokin’ a while back,
a few days later picked it up
again. On again off again
diminishes my resilience,
exposes me like a wind-swept
hill in a desert countryside,
continuous fret over some
chemical I need freedom from.
But addiction ain’t soulbreak.
I never want to feel it,
but I wonder what it’s like.
Like the “lucky one” who didn’t die
in a missile strike, you carry
on like you just walked out of a
bomb blast. Everything is ravaged,
outside stimulus is padded,
like experiencing life in
a soundproof room, pulsin’ to the beat
of a heart, on adrenaline.
Love is a battlefield they say,
but especially the dyin’ part,
the end of something as cherished
as life or love, that shit isn’t pretty.
A battlefield ain’t soulbreak.
I never want to feel it,
but I wonder what it’s like.
I’ve seen it happen, in movies
repeatedly but only twice
in reality. Vanished love,
leaving a vacuum for despair
and black anguish to flood, to fill
a missing gap that use’ta be
shaped like someone you cherished even
more than yourself. The soul breaks when
you emotionally realize
your love, the love, is over and
through.
I ain’t ever been through soulbreak
I never want to feel it,
I have seen what it feels like.
Luckily, for those that don’t put
a gun in their mouth and pull that
tempting trigger, life moves forward
shit gets better, and best of all,
them godforsaken memories
that broke your soul will fade. Keep on,
one foot in front of the other,
you will find something new to shove
in your chest right next to your heart,
that you can cherish, like no other.
dobbshead 