What becomes of the broken hearted?

My heart is broken, shattered into a million tiny shards. Nothing will ever fix it, no amount of araldite can ever make it whole again. Even an entire studio of sticky back plastic and toilet roll tubes wont be enough to mend it. Ever again.

I feel cold and empty inside, in a dark, dark place where the sun doesn’t shine.

Where it will be winter for the whole of eternity, where ice covers my soul and a gasp of emptiness is in the space that my heart once occupied. Tears trickle down my cheek, salty and sweet. I watch the rain pour down the window pane and my tears fall at a similar pace. I start to howl, taking big long gasping sobs, the dog looks up at me and wonders what on earth can be wrong with me, for normally I am the calm and quiet one not the one who howls in the afternoon for no reason.

The grief is so intense that I feel shots of pain coursing through my abdomen. The soft warm spot I have under my rib cage seems void of all sensation, apart from intense loneliness and longing for what was, what could have been…

I roll over onto my side, and snuggle down deep under the covers, trying to get back into the foetal position in order to gain some much needed comfort. It’s no good, my adult body finds it hard to curl up so small, and I start crying again, softer now. I bury my face in the pillow, gently inhaling the smell of the washing powder of the clean sheets and I start to feel calm once more.  My hot cheek touches the coolness of the pillowslip and I slowly close my eyes. I sink my head into the pillow and attempt to ease myself into a deep slumber. I must doze off because when I awake, it is dark outside, the street lamp has come on emitting an eerie glow into the dark night. Steam is rising from the street below, where the heat of the day meets the cold of the night. I shiver and pull the covers higher, until they are tucked right up under my chin. I realise that one day I am going to have to face the world and put on a brave façade. But not today, today I am going to wallow in self pity and make the most of feeling sad. I don’t often allow myself to succumb to raw emotion, normally I am clinically efficient and hardened to emotional outbursts. All that changed when I met my lover. He showed me how to love properly and how to open my heart to the world. And now, what? Nothing, game over. No chance of ever completing the rest of the time we should have had together. I am grieving not only for the love that I have lost but the chances we would have had together had only time been on our side. But no, our love was curtailed, cut short, we fell at the final hurdle.