Heartbreak · Featured poem Grief is Understanding Love By Kim The heart of Casting Dreams · Read in full, without an ad.
A prayer so silent, only the Lord could hear, because I knew only He could understand—
for someone to love me, to be there when I called, to have open ears and an unbranded heart to call my own.
I thought this prayer had fallen on deafened ears, or the Lord our God had thought me undeserving.
For as it was whispered, so it drifted away.
The symphony of it must have been carried on a membrane too thin, for it fell as mist and vanished into the air.
But then there was you.
You appeared suddenly, and I thought you a gift.
Given to me by the Creator, the other part of me— a rib taken from your chest, ordained to become one.
You made me feel adored, and I mistook that feeling for an answer.
I thought the waiting was over. That all those years my prayer had been travelling toward this moment, toward your hands.
Imagine, then, the heartbreak of discovering what those hands could do.
You saw my tears. You knew where it hurt. And still, you returned to the very thing that hurt me.
It felt as though you had learned my wounds by holding me, then used that knowledge to reach them.
How could I understand?
I had thanked God for you in whispers before I began asking why.
I had laid my fear beside your sleeping body and, for a little while, forgotten to pick it up.
I thought I could rest.
But while I was learning the language of your tenderness, you were sending your longing somewhere beyond me.
I was within your reach at all times.
Yet somehow, I became the place you returned to without ever coming home.
Now even the memory of feeling loved brings me to grief.
I search those moments for a warning— some tremor in your voice, some hesitation in your hands.
But I remember warmth.
That is what breaks me.
There was warmth where I now know there was betrayal.
And I cannot understand how you kept both beneath the same roof while I slept there.
My hurt became anger, which ran so my resentment could walk as it does now.
It walks quietly. It knows your footsteps. It reaches the door before I do.
And when you hold me, something within me remains standing— unable to rest where it once laid down its guard.
I worked years to become soft again.
You met me when I could finally open my hands.
Now I hold my hurt as armor over my heart’s bearings, afraid that letting go will mean letting you in.
How do I love again someone I have unloved?
How do I return to the prayer without remembering what I once believed was its answer?
For I did not lose only you.
I lost the quiet certainty that something tender had finally heard me.
I lost the ease with which I could say I have someone and believe there was nothing more I needed to ask.
And if I leave, I will grieve what others say has already been lost.
They did not hear the prayer.
They do not know how long I waited, or how softly I said thank you when you arrived.
Somewhere within me, that old prayer is still waiting—
unable to understand why the man I thought had answered it became the reason I could barely speak it again. Save to your shelf
Select a line that stays with you. Now, your voice What did you find within? Perhaps a face appeared. Perhaps a memory returned, or a feeling finally found its name. Begin there. Write about a love you are grieving, a trust you lost, or the part of yourself you are trying to keep. Your words may help another reader feel understood.