My favorite bittersweet love poems right now
I have been broken up with!! What the hell! These are the poems I am turning to over and over again right now as I continue to live my life but also spend a lot more time in bed super sad. If you have any good bittersweet love poems you turn to, please send them to me.
“ANYTHING WORTH DOING IS WORTH DOING BADLY!! …How can they say the marriage failed?” This has got to be one of the greatest poems of all time. Every time I have been badly hurt by romantic love, I have also felt thoroughly grateful to have the experience of love. I do believe that anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Gabrielle Blair wrote a great post on doing things poorly here.
:( When I read this one I imagine a reaching so long and wide, reaching so intensely that you pass through other worlds, other dimensions. Have you longed for someone that much?
In detangling your life, your atom particles, from any person or relationship, isn’t is strange how the most random moment can bring an intense memory to mind?
His arm. His arm. The stress of that line brings me to my knees. How the arm (any part of them, physically or otherwise) is luminous, becomes routine, and then when he’s gone you remember it once again. It’s no longer yours!
Aren’t these all so good? Poetry heals me man.
I write about love a lot. Read some of my other articles on love, found and lost, below:
the places we go alone: The Richard Nixon Presidential Library
I’ve had moments recently of intense longing. It’s almost physically painful. I reach back to my last romantic relationship and whether I am missing him, the idea of him, a partner in general (the answer is all three), I am MISSING. It ebbs and flows but it’s intense. I c…
commitment !
You know the feeling when you haven’t fully committed to something and still need to decide? You’re in this transient, liminal space. It doesn’t feel great. Why is commitment hard?
learning is love
Because I love you, I want to know everything about you. And yet, we never truly know everything about a person. Every human is a complex, hurting, yearning, beautiful surprise. I am reminded of this every time I hear a story about your life I have never heard before. Sometimes we will be walking down the street and your commentary on what’s going on ca…
love is being able to look them in the eye
I am constantly on the lookout to learn how to live my life in love. This past semester, I was able to take an entire class on James Baldwin. We read many of Baldwin’s short stories, essays, and novels. Baldwin’s novel Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone
to be in relationship is to be changed
I was in a meeting the other day when a woman raised her hand and stated that to be in relationship is to be changed. It made me pause and I quickly wrote it down. I love the more oft heard phrase, “to be loved is to be changed”, but appreciated this spin to speak on relationship. I think they might be two different things that often happen at the same …
i found unrequited love
On Sunday, I spread a picnic blanket out at the park, took my shoes off and sat down with Adrienne Rich’s The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977. On the very first page, I noticed a message written in pencil: “Meg, I hope you enjoy this as much as I have. Love, Katie”. It was dated at the bottom, 9/16/15, with another message, “Happy Birthday! …
"to love and be loved is to rest"
One of my all time favorite poets, who happens to also be the current U.S. Poet Laureate, Ada Limón, recently came to my school for a beautiful night of poetry. I was excited to attend and see her in person. Last year I’d gone on a Limón streak, checking out multiple books of hers from the library. I love how she connects humanness to nature in her work…
xoxoxo
I'm sorry to hear about your breakup! Heartache is a different kind of ache altogether. Not poems, but two song recommendations: Will Anybody Ever Love Me? by Sufjan Stevens and You've Got the Love by Florence and the Machine.
You write the best poems…and you find the best poems!