to lose someone you love is to alter your life forever. -jeanette winterson

to lose someone you love

is to alter your life forever.

the pain stops, there are new

people, but the gap never closes…

this hole in your heart is the shape of the one you lost –

no one else can fit it.

-jeanette winterson

my heart is still here, still empty

it doesn’t matter that i’ve written this poem

so many times before.

or that i will write it

at least that many times more.

i still think you’ll be there to wave to on my way to math.

but i have it first period now,

and you were never on time anyways.

your walls are still shockingly bare.

they are blank and white and cold and empty.

every so often a math equation will fill some of the space,

and it will hurt all over again

when i remember that it was hope that you put up on those walls,

hope that you gave to us in the form of cheesy posters and your kids’ halloween candy.

it’a always the same

-empty walls

-empty space

-empty pages

-empty hearts

this space was all here and empty before,

just filled with potential.

but even that is gone,

because you are gone,

and you are not coming back.

i try to fill it.

i love everyone who’s still here.

i perform slam poems to my shampoo bottles.

i try to live.

but it’s been over a year.

and those empty walls won’t let me forget:

they’re not the only things that are still empty.