How do you capture heartache in story? I’ve made some attempts but my guess is that although they’ll come close, that deep down empty kind of pain is too personal to get out onto a page. Here is one:

“You heard my pain and I believed you were sorry. I tried to rein in my heart, to bind it, chain it, encase it so you wouldn’t hear it. My muscles know you and I have to force them away from you and teach the sinew to straighten out when they continue to want to bend toward you with long remembered elasticity.

You told me if we went down this path together, there would be no turning back. But you did-you turned away, turned your back. It is cold here now and empty. I try to focus, to regroup, to revise expectations, to dream new dreams, but everything is blurry and ghost-like, I move through the days-breathe, step, breathe, step.

No one sees, for my outside is steady and normal. But my inside is upside-down, backwards, rend-dark lingers there like night waiting for a dawn that will not come. How can two hearts bump into each other and not shatter that protective shell when they’ve shared so much, when their eyes have spoken an unknown language, oblivious to all else around them? Mine did-it shattered.”

I’ll keep working on this.