I was always a broken heart.

I've heard it said a man is gene, meme, scene:
what happened to him, what he knows, what he is
but I did not understand
that one is the same as the other
that I am the cause as well as the effect.

I knew.
I learned the dark romantic
from those who would share light,
felt meaning and found memories of that
which was most important to me – that
wretched, wrenching, writhing, ready soul
who believes so much and fights so hard
for a poem and a song
and nothing to show for it.
I understood the story before I told it.
And I knew where it would end.

I brought myself to this. Again and again.
Knowing the kiss goodnight would save me
and believing you better off.
Knowing the right words at the wrong time.
Knowing why you had to leave.
Knowing love with a phantom specter, a mirror darkly,
a fairy story girl
who knew me – how could she not! - for what I am.

And I am a broken heart. A cautionary tale for the cautious.
A warning for the vivid and vivacious - for those who feel love
without any hope or sense, and yet flinch from the brink
as they tumble over it.
Desperate souls starving to feel without thinking, think without feeling.
Gamblers playing for their lives with empty palms outstretched.
I could have tried a thousand ways
to love you, and it could have ended a thousand ways, all of them
just
like
this.

So smile, as I do. Let the meaning fade – I'll keep it company
a while longer.
Say, enough! For it was always this.
No stroke of destiny, but no pretend,
no faking what I feel - just feeling it to the end.

I was always a broken heart
struggling to mend.